Author: Momo Chan

I hadn’t spoken to my boyfriend in two weeks. A fourteen-day cold war that felt like a slow suffocation. In a moment of desperate weakness, I decided to join a relationship counseling livestream, hoping some internet guru could tell me how to fix the cracks in an eight-year foundation. Just as my turn was coming up, someone outbid me, paying to jump the queue. The caller was anonymous. The moment he spoke, my breath hitched. “Hey, Coach,” the voice said, low and steady. “I’ve fallen for a new girl at work. She’s… she’s everything my girlfriend isn’t. I’ve been giving my girl the silent treatment for two weeks just to get some space. We’ve been together for eight years. I don’t love her anymore, but I don’t want to be the villain. How do I end it without looking like the bad guy?” The voice was so familiar it made my skin crawl. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs, praying I was wrong. Then the host spoke. “Listen, man,” the host said with a cynical shrug. “If she hasn’t reached out after two weeks of silence, she’s probably over it too. Just send a ‘we need to talk’ text and say it’s not working. If she’s mad enough, she’ll agree, and you’re off the hook. Clean break.” The words had barely left the host’s mouth when my phone buzzed in my hand. A text from Tyler. Joanna, I’ve been thinking a lot. I just don’t think our personalities mesh anymore. We’re spinning our wheels. Let’s call it quits. Goodbye. … 1 My fingers trembled as I typed back. [Eight years, Tyler. It took you eight years to realize our personalities don’t ‘mesh’?] He didn’t reply to me. Instead, his voice came through the speakers again, sounding frustrated. “Coach, that didn’t work. She’s pushing back.” “My girlfriend… she’s the sensitive, deep type. She’s not the kind of girl to just let go or throw a tantrum. She’ll want to talk it out. She’ll want to ‘fix’ it.” He sighed, a long, weary sound, as if I were a heavy coat he was exhausted from wearing. The live chat was exploding. “Total scumbag. Anonymous coward. Go live with your face on, let your girlfriend see who you really are!” “The new girl is gonna regret the day she met you.” “Host, kick this loser off. This is nauseating.” The host, leaning into the drama, leaned closer to his mic. “So, this new girl at the office. Does she even like you back? Or are you blowing up your life for a fantasy?” I held my breath. More than anyone watching, I needed to know. Was this a temporary lapse in judgment? A mid-life crisis at thirty? Or was my world truly ending? After a few beats of silence, he spoke. “Actually… we’re already living together.” The glass in my hand slipped. It shattered against the hardwood, shards grazing my bare ankle, but I didn’t feel the sting. I just stared at the screen, my mind reeling. Living together. We had been in a ‘cold war’ for fourteen days, and he had already moved in with someone else. Eight years tossed into the trash in two weeks. “I tried to fight it,” Tyler continued, his voice taking on a wistful, romantic tone. “I really did. But every time I went home, I saw her in the same old faded leggings, cooking the same three meals she’s made for a decade. It felt… stagnant. Like a pool of standing water.” “But the girl at the office? She’s different. Every day is a new outfit, a new energy. She takes me to these trendy pop-up bars, shows me these viral dance trends… it’s like she’s a jolt of electricity. For the first time in years, my heart is actually beating again. My girlfriend is just… a habit I can’t break.” Stagnant. A bitter laugh escaped my throat. I looked down at my ‘faded leggings’ and my oversized sweater. I hadn’t bought new clothes in three years. Tyler and I were both transplants in this city, working our fingers to the bone to save for a down payment. We wanted a home. A future. And that required sacrifice. In the beginning, it wasn’t like this. 2 I remember the early years. I used to spend my entire paycheck on silk dresses and designer perfume just to see his eyes light up when I walked into a room. I gave him the best version of myself when the world was still bright. But life isn’t a romantic comedy. In our third year, Tyler’s father had a stroke that left him paralyzed. The family’s primary earner was gone, and his younger sister, Mia, was still in high school. Tyler crumbled. The weight of his entire family shifted onto his shoulders overnight. My friends told me to run. My parents begged me to leave. “That kind of baggage will bury a young man,” they said. “He’ll take you down with him.” But I didn’t believe them. I believed in us. I believed we were stronger than bad luck. I stopped buying the dresses. I stopped going to the salon. I taught myself to cook so we wouldn’t waste money on takeout. At first, I was terrible at it—I could only master a few basic recipes. But back then, Tyler would take a bite and grin like I’d won a Michelin star. “Jo, you’re a genius! This is incredible!” I’d laugh, knowing it was just basic pasta, and I’d feel so loved it hurt. I saved every penny of my salary and funneled it to him so he could send it home to Mia and his mother. Back then, Tyler’s eyes would get misty, and he’d hold my hands tight. “If I ever forget what you’ve done for me, Joanna, I hope I lose everything. I’m never letting you go.” I’d hush him, kissing his knuckles. “Don’t say things like that. We’re a team.” Two years later, his father passed away. I went back to his hometown for the funeral. It was the first time I met his mother and Mia. His mom held me, weeping, calling me a “godsend.” Mia called me “Sis” and promised she’d repay me someday. I hugged them back, sincerely. “I don’t want repayment. I love Tyler, and I love you guys. We’re going to get a big house one day, and you’ll both come live with us.” I meant it. I worked for it. By this year, our joint savings account was finally enough for a three-bedroom house in the suburbs. I thought the hardship was over. I thought we had finally made it to the “happily ever after.” Instead, I got a betrayal. He was bored of the stability I had bled for. He wanted “electricity.” The tears finally came, hot and stinging, not because I was weak, but because my heart was literally breaking in my chest. The chat was a riot now. “TRASH MAN! LEAVE!” “I feel so bad for the girlfriend. She probably thinks they’re just having a spat.” “Bro, I get the boredom, but this is cold-blooded.” Tyler couldn’t handle the heat. He disconnected abruptly. Then, the host called my name. It was my turn to go on air. But the questions I had prepared—How do I get him to talk to me? How do I fix our communication?—felt like ash in my mouth. 3 The truth was out. There was no “fixing” a mirror that had been shattered and stepped on. I sat in silence on the line for sixty seconds, the host calling “Hello?”, before I simply hung up. I sat on the living room floor until the sun came up. When 7:00 AM hit, I tried to stand, only to realize the spot on my foot where the glass had hit was swollen and purple. The pain was sharp, but I welcomed it. It was a physical distraction from the void in my soul. I cleaned the wound, changed into a clean set of clothes, and limped out the door. I needed to see her. The “bright, fresh” girl who had stolen eight years of my life. I drove to his office. I sat in the parking lot, my hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. And then, I saw them. Tyler came out the front doors, laughing, his arm draped over a girl’s shoulder. It felt like a physical blow to my stomach. I squinted through the windshield, needing to see her face. He said something that made her blush and turn her head. My heart stopped. I knew her. It was Hailey. Hailey had been Mia’s mentor in college. When Tyler and I had taken Mia on a road trip a few years back, Hailey had accidentally bumped into our car with her bike. That was how they met. At the time, Tyler acted like he couldn’t stand her. “She’s so flighty,” he’d complained. “Mia needs to stop hanging out with girls who have no sense of responsibility.” Mia had just rolled her eyes at him and whispered to me, “Hailey’s not like that. She’s just had a hard time. Her parents are awful—totally sexist, they only care about her brother. She’s actually the smartest person I know. She just needs a break.” I felt for her. I really did. A few months later, I quietly paid for Hailey’s final semester of tuition through Mia. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to keep her in school. Hailey had even sent me a four-page handwritten thank-you note and a box of specialty tea from her hometown. Two years ago, Mia came to me again. Hailey was struggling to find a job. “I know Tyler doesn’t like her, Jo, but she’s desperate. Please? She’ll take any entry-level position, any salary. She just needs a foot in the door.” Tyler’s company had been complaining about the “entitled” interns they were getting. Thinking I was solving two problems at once, I talked Tyler into giving her a chance. He had grumbled and made a face, but eventually said, “Fine, for you, I’ll do it.” A few weeks after she started, she invited us to dinner to say thank you. Before the food even arrived, she tried to toast us with a glass of wine. Tyler had reached out and stayed her hand, his brow furrowed. “Don’t drink that. You know you can’t handle it. Don’t be reckless. Joanna doesn’t care about the formalities.” At the time, a tiny seed of unease had planted itself in my gut. I’m severely allergic to alcohol. At Tyler’s father’s funeral, his uncles had pressured me to drink to “honor the dead.” 4 I had looked at Tyler, my face already flushing with hives, silently begging for help. He had just shrugged and said, “Jo, it’s just a toast. Give my family some respect. A few sips won’t kill you.” I ended up in the ER that night on an IV drip. And yet, here he was, protecting Hailey from a single glass of Chardonnay. When we got home that night, he had noticed my mood and laughed it off. “Oh, that? We had a team-building happy hour a few weeks ago. Hailey had one drink and almost fainted. Some guys were hovering around her like vultures, so I had to step in and play big brother. I was just making sure she didn’t make a fool of herself again.” I believed him. I was the “stable” one, the “secure” one. Why would I doubt him? I wiped the tears from my face and dialed Mia. She picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Mia. Tyler and I… we’re having a bit of a rough patch. He’s moved out and won’t tell me where he is. Do you know where he’s staying? I just want to talk to him.” Mia’s voice was instantly tight with panic. “Oh… uh, Jo. I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. Don’t go to the office, okay? I’ll… I’ll call him. I’ll make him come home and apologize tonight. Just stay put!” I hung up without another word. A few minutes later, I saw Mia’s car pull into the office lot. Hailey came down to meet her. They talked for a long time, Hailey looking distressed, Mia looking frustrated. Then Mia drove off. I closed my eyes. The last shred of hope vanished. Everyone knew. His sister, the girl I had helped put through school—everyone was in on the secret except the woman who had paid the bills. I didn’t wait for him to come home. I went to a Starbucks, bought eight large Iced Americanos, and walked straight into his office building. I saw them at the reception desk, flirting shamelessly. Tyler was leaning in close; Hailey was giggling. They both froze when they saw me. Tyler’s face went pale. Hailey looked like she wanted to bolt. I didn’t give them a chance. I stepped up to the desk, took two of the coffees, ripped the lids off, and poured them slowly over both of their heads. “The first round,” I said, my voice eerily calm, “is for the two of you hooking up behind my back like a couple of stray dogs.” Hailey shrieked as the ice-cold liquid hit her. Tyler tried to shield her, his hands fluttering uselessly. I opened two more. “The second round,” I said, drenching Tyler’s expensive suit jacket, “is for the eight years of my life you just pissed away.” The office had gone silent. People were peering over their cubicles. Hailey was sobbing now, the brown liquid staining her white blouse. Tyler finally found his voice. He lunged forward and slapped me—hard. The force of it sent me stumbling back against the desk. “Joanna! What the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like a psycho! You’re making up lies about Hailey! I could have you arrested for this!” I didn’t say anything. I just straightened up, my cheek throbbing, and picked up the next two cups. “And the third round is for the ‘false’ police report you’re about to file.” I threw those too. Hailey tried to grab my arm, her face a mask of ‘innocent’ tragedy. “Joanna, please! You’ve heard some rumors and you’re overreacting. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. I know… I know it’s hard for women over thirty to keep their emotions in check, but this is too much!” She looked around the room, making sure everyone saw her ’empathy.’ “Tyler told me you were getting paranoid and unstable lately. I didn’t want to believe him, but now…” I didn’t argue. I grabbed the final two cups. This time, Tyler didn’t just slap me. He shoved me with everything he had. I tripped, my head slamming into the sharp corner of the reception desk. Everything went blurry. I felt something warm trickling down my forehead. “Joanna, enough!” Tyler screamed. “This is a place of business, not your kitchen!” I stayed on the floor, the coffee pooling around me, blood dripping into my eye. And then, I started to laugh. A wild, jagged sound that filled the room. “I’m unstable? I’m paranoid? I’m the problem?” I looked up at Tyler’s horrified face. “Fine. I’m the problem. So you’re free. Go have your ‘fresh blood,’ Tyler. I hope she was worth the price.” I stood up, shaking. “Be out of the apartment by tonight. Take your trash with you. We’re done.”

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My daughter went behind my back and signed up for The Reunion, one of those high-drama reality shows meant to reconnect lost families. The entire nation watched her break down in front of the cameras. She sobbed, her face a mask of calculated agony, claiming she’d known since she was a child that she wasn’t mine. She told the world I’d spent twenty years treating her like a punching bag, emotionally and physically. She even went as far as to say her life in my home was worse than a stray dog’s. Listening to this girl—the child I had meticulously raised, protected, and poured my life into for two decades—slander me with such venom felt like an ice pick through the heart. Then came the kicker. Right there on live television, she dropped to her knees. She wailed into the microphone, begging for her biological parents to find her. She cried that she knew they must have had a “tragic reason” for giving her up, that she didn’t blame them, and that her only wish was to finally be “brought home.” If she wants her biological parents that badly, I’m not going to stand in her way anymore. But I can’t help but wonder. When she finally realizes who brought her into this world, will she cry even harder than she is now? 1 The host, a woman with a practiced look of maternal concern, helped my daughter, Jade, to her feet and handed her a tissue. “Don’t you worry, Jade,” the host said, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy. “This show will do everything in its power to find your real family.” She then leaned in, guiding Jade further down the path of public execution. “The waiting is the hardest part. While we track down leads, why don’t you tell the world a bit more? How exactly did your adoptive mother treat you? Don’t be afraid. We’re here to protect you now.” That’s how these shows work—the more trauma, the better. They trade in tears for ratings. Jade nodded, dabbing at her eyes with a delicate, practiced grace. “I was basically a servant,” she whispered. “I remember once, when I was little, I accidentally broke a plate while doing the dishes. She didn’t just yell. She grabbed my hand and held it under a pot of boiling water on the stove.” Jade held up her left hand. The studio lights caught the raised, jagged scar tissue on her skin. “And another time,” she choked out, “I lost a twenty-dollar bill I was supposed to use for groceries. She locked me in the basement and beat me with a wooden hanger for three days straight. She didn’t leave a single inch of my skin unbruised.” The camera zoomed in on Jade’s face, a tight close-up of her trembling lip, underscored by a mournful cello soundtrack. The audience erupted in murmurs of horror and disgust. “Monster,” someone shouted from the front row. “How can a woman be so evil?” The on-set “behavioral expert” cleared his throat, looking directly into the lens. “This is a classic case of a narcissistic sociopath. People like this don’t see children as human beings; they see them as toys. They play with them when they’re bored and torture them when they’re frustrated.” Jade nodded vigorously at the word “torture.” My fingers shook so hard I almost dropped my phone. Jade’s hand had been burned because she was a clumsy toddler who reached for a pot while I was distracted for a split second. I had spent three months’ worth of salary and worked double shifts just to afford the best specialists and laser treatments for her. I had sat by her hospital bed for three weeks, barely sleeping, praying the skin would heal. And the “beating” with the hanger? She had started stealing money from my purse and local shops to buy things she didn’t need. I had grounded her and, yes, I had given her a sharp swat with a plastic hanger on her backside once—just once—to make her understand that theft had consequences. We weren’t blood, but I had never, not for one second, failed her. I had stayed single my entire life, bypassing any chance at a romantic partner because I didn’t want a stepfather to complicate her life. I had loved her to the point of self-erasure. And this was my reward. “Ungrateful” didn’t even cover it. She was a scavenger, picking apart the bones of our life to feed her own victim narrative. Jade wiped another tear. “Mom, Dad… I don’t want to suffer anymore. I just want to be with you. I don’t know why you left me, but I’m an adult now. I graduated college. I just landed a prestigious government job. I’m a success. I won’t be a burden to you. Please… just take me back.” She was so worried about being a burden to people who had thrown her away like trash, but she didn’t give a damn about ruining the woman who had carried her. I was twenty-five when I took her in. For the first two years, I didn’t have a single night of uninterrupted sleep. Every night at 3 AM, her crying would pierce the silence, and I would rock her until the sun came up. My friends told me I was aging in dog years, turning from a vibrant young woman into an exhausted shadow. Beyond the physical toll, we were broke. I borrowed money for her formula. Later, when I finally started earning a decent living as a teacher, every cent went to her dance lessons, her tutors, her clothes. I never complained. Not once. But now that she had her degree and a career, she was kicking me to the curb to go play “happy family” with the strangers who shared her DNA. The studio lights shifted, focusing on a set of giant, ornate double doors at the back of the stage. On this show, if they find the parents, this is where they make their grand entrance. Jade stared at the doors, her voice cracking. “I just want to belong. Blood is thicker than water. You gave me life, and now I want to give back to you.” She sat there, filled with a sickening, naive hope. She had no idea that if those two people actually walked through those doors, they would destroy everything she had worked for. Her precious government job? It would be gone the second the background check hit the “immediate family” section. 2 The bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch break. I shut off the livestream on my phone, gathered my lesson plans, and headed to my classroom. I am a high school history teacher. And Jade’s biological parents? They were once my students. Their names were Frank Miller and Darla Vance. Twenty years ago, when I was a brand-new teacher, they were in my first-ever homeroom class. They were teenagers who got pregnant and, out of pure, panicked cowardice, delivered the baby in a disgusting gas station restroom and dropped her into the trash. I was the one who found her. When I pulled Jade out of that bin, she was blue, cold, and seconds away from death. The “blood bond” she was so desperate for didn’t exist. It had been severed in a pile of paper towels and filth. As Jade grew up, I had kept tabs on Frank and Darla from a distance. If they had turned their lives around, I might have told her the truth. But they hadn’t. They had gone on to have four more children. The two oldest girls were married off barely out of high school for whatever “dowry” or favors Frank could squeeze out of the grooms. The third daughter was kept at home like a servant to raise the youngest—the only son, who was treated like a little god. I couldn’t let Jade go back to that den of wolves. More importantly, Jade had just secured a high-level position with the state. Frank and Darla both had extensive criminal records—drug possession, fraud, assault. If she associated with them, if she was legally tied to them, her security clearance would be revoked instantly. I sighed. But if this was the choice she wanted to make, I was done protecting her. I’d given my heart to a dog, and the dog had bitten me. I straightened my blouse and walked into the classroom. But as soon as I pushed the door open, a bucket of ice-cold water propped above the frame drenched me from head to toe. My students—kids I had taught for three years—were staring at me with pure vitriol. “How can you even show your face here, Ms. Miller?” one boy spat. (Ironic, given that was his last name too). “Abusing your own daughter is one thing,” a girl in the front row sneered, holding up her phone showing a viral post. “But being a total slut on the side? Acting like a pillar of the community by day and a hooker by night? You’re disgusting.” The rumors had started. I knew immediately Jade was behind this. While I changed into my gym clothes in the faculty locker room, I pulled up the livestream again. The producers were milking the suspense. They hadn’t opened the doors yet. Jade, thinking her parents had rejected her again, was having a full-blown meltdown for the cameras. “Mom! Dad! Do you really want me to keep suffering?” she wailed. “Do you have any idea…” She hesitated, then leaned into the mic, her eyes wild. “My adoptive mother is a degenerate. She’s out every night at cheap motels with different men. Do you really want to leave me with a woman who sells herself for a better car? Who brings that filth into our home?” The host looked genuinely shocked—or was doing a great job of faking it. “Jade, that’s a heavy accusation. Your mother is a respected teacher. She was just nominated for a Senior Faculty Tenure. Are you sure?” To prove it, Jade pulled a stack of photos from her bag. They were grainy, but clear. There I was, entering and leaving various high-rise buildings and hotels with different men. Tall men, short men, older men. The show’s “tech team” did a quick scan and announced the photos weren’t Photoshopped. “I wouldn’t lie about this,” Jade sobbed. “How else do you think a public school teacher could afford to pay for my college and my lifestyle? It wasn’t on a teacher’s salary.” I stood in the locker room, shivering—not just from the cold water, but from the sheer, breathtaking cruelty of it. The photos were real. But I wasn’t going to those buildings for sex. I was going for real estate. The men in the photos were agents. Jade’s new job was an hour-long commute from our house. I had been spending my weekends looking for a condo to buy for her, something close to her office so she wouldn’t be exhausted every day. The irony was sickening. I had just received the deed this morning. I was going to surprise her tonight with the keys. The audience didn’t know that. They were already calling for my head. “She probably wanted to recruit the daughter into the family business,” someone commented on the stream. “And that tenure? We all know how she got that.” My phone buzzed. A text from the principal. Miriam, regarding the Senior Faculty Tenure nomination… due to recent ‘complications’ and budget shifts, we’ve decided to move in a different direction. We’ll be prioritizing candidates who better reflect the values of this institution. 3 The promotion was gone. Decades of staying late, grading papers until my eyes bled, and being a mentor to these kids—vanished in a single afternoon. Jade knew exactly how much that tenure meant to me. She knew I had been working on my thesis for two years just to qualify. And she had burned it to the ground with one sentence. I marched to the Principal’s office to explain, but he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. “Miriam, the optics are catastrophic,” he said, staring at his desk. “Parents are already calling for your resignation. If I don’t act, they’ll go to the School Board. The tenure is off the table. As for your job… I suggest you go home and handle your ‘family business’ before the mob shows up here.” I walked out of the office. In the hallway, I passed the “Teacher of the Month” board. Someone had used a permanent marker to black out my eyes and scrawl “WHORE” across my biography. Colleagues I’d had lunch with for years turned their backs when I passed. I couldn’t sit back anymore. I called Jade. I needed her to tell the truth, right now. On the screen, Jade’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. She didn’t answer. Instead, she acted like she’d been struck. She dropped to her knees again and began slapping her own face in front of the live audience. “She’s calling me!” Jade screamed. “She knows I’m here! She’s going to kill me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said anything! Please, just don’t hurt me anymore!” She started kowtowing, banging her forehead against the stage floor. The more she groveled, the more like a monster I looked. The host rushed to pull her up, her voice trembling with indignation. “Jade, you are safe here. You have us. You have this audience. You have millions of people watching. She can’t touch you.” Even the “expert” got fired up. “Child, you’ve survived twenty years of hell. We are going to find your real parents. We are going to give you your dream.” I couldn’t reach her, and my silence was being edited into guilt. My phone number was leaked online within minutes. My inbox flooded with thousands of messages. Kill yourself. Why are you still breathing? Die, bitch. Suddenly, the livestream showed Jade heading “to the restroom.” My phone rang. It was her. Gone was the whimpering victim. Her voice was sharp, cold, and dripping with triumph. “Hey, Miriam. You like your gift?” I gripped the phone, my knuckles white. “Jade… why? What did I ever do to deserve this?” She laughed. It was a hollow, ugly sound. “You tried to keep me from them. You tried to gatekeep my own blood. You get what you deserve.” She was a black hole. No matter how much light I poured into her, she only wanted to consume. If things didn’t go exactly her way, she didn’t just walk away—she sought to destroy. “I told you the truth about them because they are dangerous, Jade. Why won’t you listen?” When Jade was ten, she found out she was adopted. I didn’t want to traumatize her with the story of the gas station trash can, so I told her a beautiful lie: that I’d found her in a bundle of blankets on a snowy night. When she turned eighteen, I tried to give her the real version, in pieces. I hinted at the dark truth. She refused to believe it. She convinced herself I was lying to keep her “tethered” to me. “You’re a liar,” she spat into the phone. “No parents would try to kill their own daughter. Oh, I forgot—you don’t have kids of your own. You’re hollow inside. You don’t even have a uterus, remember? How could you possibly understand a parent’s love?” I had undergone a hysterectomy years ago due to severe endometriosis, but I had also chosen not to try for more children so I could focus entirely on her. My sacrifice was her punchline. “Fine, Jade,” I said, my voice going dead. “Just remember: you chose this path. Every step of it.” 4 She snorted. “Ms. Miller, you’re a pariah. Worry about yourself. But… tell you what. If you sign over the house and your savings to me, I might go back on air and say it was all a ‘misunderstanding.’ Think about it.” She wanted to bleed me dry one last time. Three years ago, I had collapsed from exhaustion and ended up in the ICU. When Jade came to see me, she didn’t ask how I felt. She looked at the heart monitor and asked, “Mom, if you die, does the life insurance go straight to me, or is it tied up in probate?” I should have known then. Some things are born broken. “Don’t hold your breath,” I said, and hung up. I didn’t waste time. I called my lawyer. I told him to draft the papers to formally dissolve our legal adoption and to freeze the trust I’d set up for her. Then I called the real estate office and told them I was putting the new condo back on the market immediately. A half-hour later, a text from Jade: Doesn’t matter what you do. The producers just told me. They found them. They’re here. I opened the livestream again.

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When the parent-teacher conference ended, I stayed in that tiny, cramped plastic chair for a long moment. I knelt down by my daughter’s side and asked her, my voice a forced whisper, what the “other mommy” in her essay looked like. Sophie blinked her big, innocent eyes. “She’s the lady Daddy takes me to see every week. He told me I have to call her Mommy, too.” Outside the school gates, Thomas was leaning against the SUV, looking every bit the doting suburban father. He flashed that easy, crooked smile of his and asked if the teacher had liked Sophie’s writing. I rolled the notebook into a tight cylinder and shoved it deep into my bag. I didn’t look him in the eye. “I’ll let you read it yourself when we get home,” I said, my voice as cold as the autumn wind. My mind kept spiraling back to the classroom. When the teacher had read Sophie’s essay aloud, the room had gone deathly quiet. She had written about having two mothers—one who lived in our house, and one who lived in “Daddy’s other house.” A few parents had let out stifled, awkward chuckles. The teacher had frozen for a heartbeat before quickly moving on to the next paper. I had been sitting in the very back row, my hands trembling so violently that the plastic water bottle in my grip crunched and popped in the silence. 1. On the drive home, Thomas drove with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching back to turn up the Disney soundtrack Sophie loved. Sophie hummed along in the backseat. He glanced at me three times in the rearview mirror. I kept my gaze fixed out the window, watching the familiar streets of our neighborhood blur into a gray smudge. The moment we stepped inside, Sophie ran off to wash her hands. I sat on the sofa and opened the notebook. The pencil marks were shaky, the letters oversized and messy. “Daddy has another house. There is a lady there. She is very nice and makes me cupcakes. Daddy says she is my mommy too, so I call her Mommy. She has very long hair and plays the guitar.” Below the text, there was a drawing. A woman with long, flowing hair sat in a wheelchair. A tall man stood beside her, holding a little girl’s hand. Above the girl’s head, Sophie had drawn a bright red heart. I closed the notebook and set it on the coffee table. Thomas came out of the kitchen with a glass of water and handed it to me. “So, what did the teacher actually say?” “She said Sophie has a vivid imagination. Great descriptive skills.” He laughed, settling into the cushion beside me. “That’s my girl.” I looked at him—really looked at him—and suddenly, his face felt like a mask. We had been married for seven years. We’d been together since our sophomore year of college. Ten years total. His smile had always been my anchor—the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the warmth in his expression. It always felt so sincere. But now, I noticed how his eyes kept darting toward the notebook on the table. His right thumb began to rub his wedding band, back and forth. I knew that gesture. He did it every time he was lying. “Thomas.” “Yeah?” “Who is the lady in Sophie’s essay?” The hand holding his water glass faltered for a fraction of a second before he took a long, steady sip. “What lady? You know how kids are, Callie. She probably made it up.” “She said you told her to call this woman ‘Mommy’.” “Oh,” he said, his voice smooth and rehearsed. “That must have been Sarah from the office. We had that company picnic a few months ago. She was probably just teasing Sophie. You know how she is.” He didn’t skip a beat. I nodded slowly. I didn’t push him. That night, while he was tucking Sophie in, I sat in the dark living room and logged into the cloud backup for his car’s dashcam. The GPS history didn’t lie. Every Thursday afternoon, the car stopped at an old apartment complex on the outskirts of the city. Arrival: 2:00 PM. Departure: 6:00 PM. Four hours, like clockwork. I took screenshots and saved them to a hidden folder on my phone. At 2:00 AM, thinking I was asleep, Thomas leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. Then, he crept out to the balcony. Through the glass door, I heard his voice—hushed, tender, aching with a softness he used to reserve only for me. “Don’t be scared,” he whispered into the phone. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning to take you to your check-up. I promise.” The next morning, I took a half-day at work. I went to the bank and pulled our shared account statements for the last six months. There it was. A recurring transfer of twelve hundred dollars every month to an account held by someone named Lydia Vance. Six months. Never a day late. I sat on the cold plastic chair in the bank lobby, my legs shaking. I pulled out a black notebook, turned to a fresh page, and wrote down the name and the amount. My handwriting was so neat it frightened me. That afternoon, I drove to the address from the GPS. I stood on the sidewalk, looking up at a first-floor balcony. A man’s white dress shirt was hanging there to dry. It was the one I had ironed myself last Sunday. I recognized the slight yellowing at the collar and the spare button I’d sewn on by hand. An elderly man walking a golden retriever passed by. He saw me staring and smiled. “You must be Mr. Miller’s sister,” he said. “Something like that,” I replied. “He’s a good man, your brother. His wife’s health is so poor—being in that wheelchair can’t be easy—but he’s here every day, cooking for her, looking after her. You don’t see that kind of devotion much anymore.” His wife. I forced a smile. “Yes. He’s always been very… devoted.” When Thomas came home that night, he brought a box of my favorite pastries from the bakery downtown. I sat at the table, methodically slicing a lemon tart. He kicked off his shoes and asked why I was so quiet. I didn’t look up. “That white shirt of yours—the cuffs are starting to fray. You should probably change into a new one tomorrow.” 2. He glanced at his sleeve and laughed. “I must have snagged it on a crate at the warehouse today. Good catch, babe.” He looked so honest. So utterly guiltless. For a second, I almost wondered if I was the one losing my mind. Over the weekend, Sophie was coloring in the living room. She drew a woman with long hair in a wheelchair again. I walked over. “Who’s this, sweetie?” “Lydia,” Sophie said. “Daddy says she’s the bravest person in the whole world. He says we have to look after her because she’s family.” Family. I stroked her hair and said nothing. After dinner, I was at the sink, the water running at full blast to drown out the noise in my head. My mother-in-law, Martha, was at the counter, drying dishes. I kept my tone casual. “Martha, Sophie’s been talking about someone named Lydia lately. Do you know her?” The dish towel slipped from Martha’s hand. She took a second too long to pick it up. When she finally looked at me, her eyes were darting toward the door. “Oh, Callie… Thomas is a man of honor. His father… well, there was an accident years ago. Lydia’s family did a great deal for us. He owes them. He’s just paying back a debt. As his wife, you really should try to be more understanding. Be the bigger person.” I turned off the faucet. I pressed my palms against the cold marble countertop. They all knew. My husband, his mother—everyone was in on the secret. I was the only one playing a role in a play I hadn’t been cast in. I was the fool. On Monday, I took Sophie to the city hospital for a routine pediatric appointment. As we passed the corridor leading to the physical therapy wing, I saw him. Thomas was pushing a wheelchair. A woman with long, dark hair sat in it, a knit blanket draped over her lap. He stopped, took off his own jacket, and tucked it carefully around her legs. He knelt down, adjusting the footrest with a practiced, intimate familiarity. I stood ten feet away, hidden behind a concrete pillar, clutching Sophie’s prescription bag so hard my nails bit into the paper. I felt nothing. Just a cold, hollow numbness. The sound of the final gavel falling. A nurse pushed a cart between us, blocking my view. By the time she passed, Thomas seemed to sense something and glanced back. But I was already gone, disappearing into the stairwell. When I got back to the office, I called Rachel, an old college friend who worked as a forensic accountant. “Rachel, I need you to teach me how to track hidden assets and marital property. Every cent.” There was a three-second silence on the other end. “Come over tonight,” Rachel said. “I’ll bring the wine and the spreadsheets.” When Thomas came home late that night, he wrapped his arms around me from behind. He buried his face in my neck, his voice low and exhausted. “Callie, I’m so tired. Being here with you is the only thing that makes me feel alive.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t pull away, but I didn’t lean in, either. His body heat seeped through my shirt—the same warmth I had relied on for a decade. But all I could think about was that he had shared that same warmth with another woman just hours ago. 3. The “business trips” started getting more frequent. Tuesdays, Thursdays, sometimes the entire weekend. I went to work. I made dinner. I played the part. But at night, when he was dead to the world, I photographed every message, every receipt, every email on his phone. I found a real estate contract in his sent folder. A two-bedroom condo, paid in full. The title was in his mother’s name—Martha Miller. The address was in the same complex where I’d seen the white shirt. The same building. The same floor. I took the photo. I saved it. On Wednesday, I received an anonymous text. “Some love is a responsibility. Some love is a gift. Thomas is exhausted. He needs a sanctuary where he is understood, not just a list of chores.” I read it twice. I didn’t reply. Screenshot. Archive. Getting into a gutter fight with a woman like that was beneath me. That Thursday night, the fever hit Sophie like a freight train. She was shaking, her skin burning, her lips turning a terrifying shade of blue. I called Thomas. First call: Straight to voicemail. Second call: Straight to voicemail. Third call: That cold, mechanical woman’s voice. “The user you are trying to reach has their phone turned off.” I grabbed Sophie and ran out into a torrential downpour, screaming for a cab. She was delirious, sobbing into my neck, her tears and saliva soaking my collar. The rain was a wall. Not a single car stopped. I stripped off my coat to wrap her in it, standing on the curb in my shirtsleeves for eight agonizing minutes. Finally, a van driver pulled over. He said he didn’t usually take passengers, but I looked like a ghost. At the ER, I did it all alone. The registration, the blood draws, the frantic pacing. The nurse asked where the father was. “It’s just me,” I said. At 4:00 AM, the fever finally broke. Sophie fell into a fitful sleep. I went to the pharmacy window to pick up her meds, and that’s when I saw him. Thomas was sprinting through the ER lobby, drenched to the bone, his face a mask of panic. His shirt was on inside out. The tag was sticking out at the neck. For a split second, I thought he was looking for us. Then I heard him speak to the pharmacist. “Lydia Vance. Severe abdominal pain. The ER doctor sent over a prescription.” He was standing five feet away from me. He was in a state of total collapse because another woman had a stomach ache. Meanwhile, our daughter had almost slipped away in a fever of 104 degrees. Then Martha appeared, scurrying down the hallway, grabbing Thomas by the arm. “Is Lydia okay? Go back to her, Thomas. She can’t be left alone right now. She’s too fragile.” She didn’t see me. Or maybe, in their world, I just didn’t exist anymore. I stood there, clutching Sophie’s antibiotics, watching the two of them hover over the ghost of another woman. My hands didn’t shake. My eyes stayed dry. But I felt something deep inside my chest shatter. It was a clean break. No jagged edges. Just a total, quiet annihilation of everything I had ever believed in. At 7:00 AM, Thomas finally checked his phone. He burst into the pediatric ward, his eyes bloodshot, his voice trembling. “Callie, I am so sorry. My phone died… there was a massive crisis at the office, I—” I sat by the bed, slowly peeling his hand off my arm. I took a wet wipe from my bag and began to clean my fingers, one by one. “It’s fine,” I said, my voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “Just don’t turn your phone off next time.” He stood there, stunned. His mouth opened, then closed. Sophie woke up and reached out for him. He picked her up, his eyes welling with tears. I watched him hold our daughter, and all I could wonder was if he’d used that exact same expression of heartbreak to comfort someone else just an hour ago. 4. For the next two weeks, I became a ghost in my own life. I worked. I cooked. I spoke to him. But behind the scenes, I moved every cent of my personal savings into my mother’s account. I applied for a six-month editorial assignment out of state, and my boss approved it immediately. I worked with Rachel to map out every asset Thomas had. He didn’t suspect a thing. He thought I’d swallowed his lies. On our seventh anniversary, he booked a table at the most expensive French restaurant in the city. The room was filled with roses and candlelight. He slid a velvet box across the table. A diamond necklace. It must have cost a fortune. He looked at me with an intensity that would have moved me to tears if I didn’t know the truth. “Callie, once things settle down at work, I want to take you and Sophie to Iceland. Let’s see the Northern Lights. Let’s start over. Okay?” His voice was hoarse. His fingers were trembling. I looked at him and felt a wave of pure, unadulterated absurdity. How could a man be so profoundly treacherous and yet look so devastatingly sincere? I nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for you.” The moment the words left my lips, his phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, and the color drained from his face. His breathing hitched. I went back to cutting my steak, my eyes focused on the plate. “If it’s an emergency, you should go.” He didn’t move. I set my knife down and looked him in the eye. “But if you walk out that door tonight, Thomas, we are done. Permanently.” His body went rigid. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. Then he closed his eyes, his voice a ragged whisper. “Lydia slit her wrists. I owe her her life, Callie. I am so sorry. I promise—this is the last time.” He stood up, the chair screeching against the floor. He turned and ran. The door swung shut behind him. The candle flame flickered and died. I sat alone at the long, empty table. I picked up a piece of rare steak and chewed it slowly. It tasted like iron. After paying the bill, I took a taxi to the apartment complex. 11:00 PM. The autumn air felt like a knife against my skin. I stood under the first-floor window, peering through a gap in the curtains. There was no blood. No slit wrists. Thomas was sitting on the sofa. Lydia was curled into his side, her head on his shoulder. Martha came out of the kitchen with a plate of sliced fruit, smiling as she set it on the coffee table. And my daughter, Sophie, was leaning against Lydia’s knees. She looked up and chirped, “Mommy, don’t be mad at Daddy anymore. We’re all going to be together forever.” Thomas looked down at them with a smile of weary, indulgent adoration. It was a perfect family portrait. A family of four. My stomach cramped so violently I thought I would be sick. I leaned over, hands on my knees, dry-heaving into the darkness. I looked down at the wedding ring on my left hand. I’d worn it for seven years. It had left a permanent indentation on my skin. I slid it off. I looked at it for two seconds. Then I dropped it into the storm drain at my feet. It hit the metal grate with a tiny, pathetic clink. You owe her your life, Thomas? Fine. Pay it with your own life. I’m done settling your debts.

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When the parent-teacher conference wrapped up, I didn’t head for the parking lot. Instead, I crouched down until I was eye-level with my son and asked him, in the softest voice I could muster, what the “other daddy” in his essay looked like. Jamie tilted his head, his eyes wide and innocent. He told me it was the man Mommy took him to see every week. Mommy told him he had to call the man “Daddy,” too. At the school gates, Rachel was leaning against the SUV, a practiced, effortless smile on her face. She asked me if the teacher liked Jamie’s creative writing piece. I rolled the notebook into a tight cylinder and tucked it deep into my messenger bag. I looked up at her, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “I’ll let you read it yourself when we get home,” I said. The silence in that classroom when the teacher had read Jamie’s essay aloud was something I would never forget. It was a heavy, suffocating weight. “I have two daddies,” Jamie had written in his messy, seven-year-old scrawl. “One lives in my house. The other lives in Mommy’s other house.” A few parents had let out stifled, awkward chuckles. The teacher had frozen, her face turning a vivid shade of pink before she hurriedly flipped to the next page. I had been sitting in the very last row. The plastic water bottle in my hand let out a sharp, rhythmic crackle as I squeezed it, the sound echoing in my ears like a slow-motion car crash. 1. Rachel drove us home. She kept one hand on the steering wheel, casual and relaxed, while the other adjusted the stereo to play Jamie’s favorite Disney soundtrack. Jamie hummed along in the backseat. I felt her eyes dart toward me three times in the rearview mirror. I didn’t look back once. I just watched the suburban landscape blur into a smear of gray and green. Once we were home, Jamie went to wash his hands for dinner. I sat on the sofa and pulled the notebook out. The lead pencil marks were shaky, the letters uneven. “There is a man at Mommy’s other house. He is very nice. He makes me cupcakes. Mommy says he is my daddy, too, and I have to call him that. He is very, very thin. He plays the guitar.” Below the text, there was a drawing. A gaunt man sitting in a wheelchair. Beside him stood a woman, composed and elegant. The woman was holding the hand of a small boy. Above the boy’s head, Jamie had drawn a bright red heart. I snapped the notebook shut and set it on the coffee table. Rachel emerged from the kitchen, handing me a glass of water. “So, what did the teacher actually say?” “She said Jamie has a vivid imagination. A real gift for expression.” She smiled, sitting down beside me, her thigh brushing mine. “That’s good to hear.” I looked at her—really looked at her—and realized I didn’t recognize the woman sitting in my living room. We’d been married for seven years. We’d been together since our sophomore year of college. Nearly a decade. Her smile was the same as it had always been: the faint crinkle at the corners of her eyes, the way her lips curved upward in a way that looked entirely sincere. But as I watched her, I noticed her gaze flickering toward the notebook on the table. Her right thumb mindlessly rubbed her wedding band, back and forth. I knew that gesture. She did it every single time she was lying. “Rachel.” “Yeah?” “Who is the man Jamie wrote about in his essay?” The hand holding her water glass hitched for a fraction of a second. Then, she took a perfectly natural sip. “What man? You know how kids are, Dan. He’s probably making up stories based on a cartoon.” “He said you told him to call this man ‘Daddy’.” “Oh, that must have been one of my colleagues,” she said, her voice smooth, not a single tremor. “I took Jamie to a team-building retreat a few months ago. One of the guys was probably just teasing him. You know how work friends can be.” It was too easy. Too rehearsed. I nodded and didn’t push. That night, after she tucked Jamie into bed, I sat in the darkened living room and accessed the cloud backup for her car’s dashcam. The GPS history told a story of its own. Every Thursday afternoon, the car stopped at an old, gated apartment complex on the edge of the city. Arrival: 2:00 PM. Departure: 6:00 PM. Four hours. Every single week. I took a screenshot and saved it to a hidden folder on my phone. At 2:00 AM, thinking I was fast asleep, Rachel leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. Then, she crept out to the balcony. Through the glass door, I heard her hushed, melodic voice. “Don’t be scared,” she whispered. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning to take you for your check-up.” The tone was tender, aching with a kind of devotion she used to reserve only for me. No. That wasn’t right. It was a tone I thought she only used for me. The next day, I took a half-day off work and went to the bank. I pulled the last six months of her personal account statements. There it was. A recurring transfer of twelve hundred dollars every month to an account owned by someone named Quinn Lawson. Six months. Not a single payment missed. I sat on the cold plastic chair in the bank lobby, my legs shaking uncontrollably. I pulled a black moleskine notebook from my bag, turned to a fresh page, and wrote down the name and the amount. My handwriting was so neat it frightened me. That afternoon, I drove to the address on the GPS. I stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the first-floor balcony. A woman’s white silk blouse was hanging there to dry. It was the one I had ironed for her last month—the one with the hidden snap-button I’d sewn back on myself. An elderly man walking his dog passed by and stopped when he saw me staring. “You must be Rachel’s brother,” he said, offering a friendly nod. “Yeah,” I lied. “Something like that.” “She’s a saint, that sister of yours. Her husband’s health is so poor—being in that wheelchair can’t be easy—but she’s here every day, cooking for him, taking care of the place. You come from a good family.” Her husband. I managed a tight, hollow smile. “Yeah. She’s always been the devoted type.” That evening, Rachel came home carrying a box from my favorite bakery—a salted caramel cake. I sat at the dining table, methodically slicing it. She kicked off her heels and asked why I was so quiet. I didn’t look up. “The cuffs on that white blouse of yours are starting to fray,” I said. “You should probably wear something else tomorrow.” 2. She glanced at her sleeves and laughed. “I must have snagged them on a filing cabinet at the office. I’ll be more careful.” She looked so innocent. So transparently honest that I almost wondered if I was the one losing my mind. That weekend, Jamie was drawing at the coffee table. He drew a thin man in a wheelchair. I walked over. “Who’s this, buddy?” “That’s Quinn,” Jamie said, not looking up from his crayons. “Mommy says he’s the loneliest person in the world. She says we have to take care of him like he’s family.” Family. I ruffled his hair and said nothing. After dinner, I was at the sink, the water running at full blast to drown out the noise of my own thoughts. My father-in-law, Walter, was standing by the back door, nursing a beer. I kept my voice casual. “Hey, Walter. Jamie keeps talking about some guy named Quinn. Do you know him?” The beer bottle slipped from Walter’s hand, thudding onto the rug. He was slow to pick it up, his eyes darting toward the hallway before they settled anywhere but on me. “Quinn… look, Dan, Rachel is a loyal girl. Her mother went through a lot back in the day, and Quinn’s family… they were there for us. We owe them. Rachel is just paying back a debt of honor. As her husband, you need to be big enough to understand that.” I turned off the faucet. I leaned my weight against the cold marble countertop. Everyone knew. From the beginning, I was the only one left in the dark. I was the only clown in this circus. On Monday, I took Jamie to the clinic for his allergy meds. As we passed the oncology wing, I saw her. Rachel was pushing a wheelchair. In it sat a skeletal man, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, leaning his head against her hip. Rachel stopped, took off her own cardigan, and draped it over his legs. She knelt down, meticulously tucking the edges around his feet. The movements were so practiced, so intimate. I stood behind a concrete pillar ten yards away, clutching Jamie’s prescription bag. My nails dug into the drywall until I expected to see blood, but I felt nothing. Just a cold, terminal numbness. A nurse pushed a cart between us, blocking my view. By the time she passed, Rachel seemed to sense something. She turned her head, searching the corridor. But I was already gone, disappearing into the stairwell. When I got back to the office, I called Patrick, an old friend from college who ran a forensic accounting firm. “Pat, I need to know how to track marital assets. Deep dive. Can you walk me through it?” There was a three-second silence on the other end. “Come over tonight,” Patrick said. “I’ll give it to you straight.” Rachel came home late that night. She wrapped her arms around me from behind while I stood in the kitchen. She pressed her face into my back, her voice muffled and weary. “Dan… only when I’m holding you do I feel like I can finally breathe.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t reach back to touch her. Her warmth radiated through my shirt, the same as it always had. But I knew that just hours ago, that same warmth had been draped over another man. 3. Rachel started “traveling for work” more frequently. Tuesdays, Thursdays, sometimes the whole weekend. I went to work, I made school lunches, and at night, when she was dead to the world, I photographed every single record on her phone. I found a real estate contract in her archived emails. Cash purchase. A two-bedroom condo, registered in Walter’s name. The address was in the same complex where I’d seen her. Same building. Same unit. I snapped the photo and saved it. On the third day of her “trip,” I received an anonymous text. “Some love is a burden, and some love is a gift. Rachel is exhausted. She needs a harbor that understands her.” I read it twice. I didn’t reply. Screenshot. Archive. Getting into a mud-slinging match with a coward wasn’t worth my time. That Thursday night, the world broke. Jamie woke up with a fever of 104. He was shaking, his lips turning a terrifying shade of blue. I called Rachel. First time: Voicemail. Second time: Voicemail. Third time: The cold, mechanical voice of the operator. I ran into the pouring rain, carrying Jamie wrapped in a blanket. He was delirious, sobbing against my neck, his tears and saliva soaking into my skin. The rain was a deluge; no Uber was coming, and cabs wouldn’t stop. I stripped off my jacket to shield him, standing on the curb in my shirtsleeves for eight agonizing minutes. Finally, an old van pulled over. The driver said he didn’t usually take passengers, but I looked desperate. At the ER, I was a whirlwind of motion—registering, paying, holding Jamie down for blood work. The nurse asked where the mother was. “It’s just me,” I said. By 4:00 AM, Jamie’s fever finally broke. He fell into a fitful sleep. I walked to the pharmacy window to pick up his meds, and that’s when I saw her. Rachel came sprinting through the ER lobby, soaked to the bone, her face a mask of panic. Her sweater was on inside out, the tag flapping at the neck. For a heartbeat, I thought she was looking for us. Then I heard her voice at the pharmacy counter. “Quinn Lawson. He’s having stomach pains. The ER doctor sent over a prescription.” She was standing less than fifteen feet away. She was in a state of total collapse because of another man’s stomach ache. While her own son had just spent the last four hours fighting for his life. Then Walter appeared, jogging down the hallway, grabbing Rachel’s arm. “Is Quinn okay? You need to get back in there with him. He’s depressed, Rachel. Don’t let him do anything stupid.” He didn’t see me. Or perhaps, in his world, I simply didn’t exist anymore. I stood there by the window, clutching Jamie’s fever reducers, watching a father and daughter worry themselves sick over another man. My hands weren’t shaking. My eyes were dry. But I felt something deep in my chest shatter. It was a clean break. There was nothing left to salvage. At 7:00 AM, Rachel finally saw my missed calls. She burst into the pediatric ward, her eyes bloodshot, her voice trembling. “Dan, I’m so sorry! My phone died, and the office had a massive emergency, and I—” I sat by the bed and slowly pushed her reaching hand away. I pulled a wet wipe from my bag and began to clean my fingers, one by one. “It’s fine,” I said, my voice so quiet I could barely hear it. “Just don’t turn your phone off next time.” She froze, her mouth opening and closing, but no sound came out. Jamie woke up and reached for me. Rachel moved to pick him up, her eyes filling with tears. As I watched her hold our son, all I could think about was whether she had used that same expression while holding Quinn Lawson. 4. For the next two weeks, I was a ghost. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I spoke to her in pleasant, even tones. But behind the scenes, I moved every cent of my personal savings into my mother’s account. I applied for a six-month editorial project overseas, and my boss approved it. I met with Patrick and finalized a list of every asset Rachel had hidden. She didn’t suspect a thing. She thought I had swallowed her lies. On our seventh anniversary, she booked a table at the most expensive French restaurant in the city. The booth was covered in roses and candlelight. She slid a velvet box across the table. A luxury watch. Not cheap. She looked at me with an intensity that would have moved me to tears if I didn’t know the truth. “Dan… once this busy season at work is over, I want to take you and Jamie to see the Northern Lights. We can start over. A fresh chapter. Okay?” Her voice was thick, her fingers trembling as they touched mine. I looked at her and felt a surge of pure, unadulterated absurdity. How could someone be so betrayed to their very bones and still act this sincere? I nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for you.” The moment the words left my lips, her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, and her face went ghostly white. Her breathing hitched. I continued cutting my steak, not looking up. “If it’s an emergency, you should go.” She didn’t move. I set my fork down and locked eyes with her. “But Rachel, if you walk out that door tonight, we’re done.” Her body went rigid. Her throat worked as she swallowed hard. Then, she closed her eyes, and a broken whisper escaped her lips. “Quinn… he slit his wrists. I owe him his life, Dan. I’m sorry. I promise, this is the last time.” She stood up, the chair screeching against the floor like a dying animal. She turned and ran. The door swung shut behind her, the candlelight flickering in the wake of her departure. I sat alone at the long, empty table. I cut the rare steak into small, precise pieces and forced them into my mouth. I chewed slowly, my throat aching as I swallowed. The sound of my silver clinking against the china was the only noise in the room. After I paid the bill, I drove to the apartment complex. It was 11:00 PM. The autumn wind bit at my face like a blade. I stood beneath the first-floor window, peering through a gap in the curtains. There was no blood. No slit wrists. Rachel was sitting on the sofa. Quinn was cradled in her arms, his head resting on her shoulder. Walter was coming out of the kitchen with a plate of sliced fruit, a warm smile on his face. And my son, Jamie, was curled up against Quinn’s legs. He looked up and said something that shattered the last of my resolve. “Daddy, don’t be mad at Mommy anymore. We’re a family forever.” Rachel looked down at them, a weary, indulgent smile on her face. It was a perfect family portrait. A family of four. My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat. I doubled over, clutching my knees, retching into the darkness, but nothing came up. I stood there in the shadows, looking down at the wedding band on my left hand. Seven years. The gold had worn a faint, permanent mark into my skin. I slid it off. I looked at it for two seconds. Then I leaned down and dropped it into the storm drain at my feet. The ring hit the iron grate with a sharp, final clink. Rachel, you owe him your life? Fine. Pay him back with your own. I’m officially out of the debt-collection business.

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When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that kitchen, the air thick with the scent of woodsmoke and old grease. I was back on the morning that ruined everything. And once again, I chose to run. I ran straight to Granny Ruth’s room, my voice high and thin, a child’s treble spilling the secret of my mother’s planned escape. In my memories, Mom had spent years whispering the truth to me like a bedtime story. She told me she wasn’t from this place—that she was a “city girl” from a family with a real house and a lawn, stolen and sold into this godforsaken hollow. She promised that one day, she would take me far away. When I was six, she finally had everything ready. But I sold her out for a slice of thick white bread slathered in honey and the hollow promise of Granny’s affection. I remember sitting on the porch, stuffing my face with that sweet, sticky bread while my mother’s screams tore through the yard. They had her tied to the old, gnarled oak tree. My father was systematic with the belt. She had looked up then, her eyes gleaming with a pure, concentrated venom I had never seen before. She didn’t look like my mother; she looked like a wounded animal. She called me a heartless little monster. At the time, I felt only a confused sense of betrayal. I didn’t understand why she wanted to leave my father and me. I thought a “family” meant staying, no matter how much it hurt. Three days later, she took her own life in the tool shed. And not long after that, on a night when the moon was shielded by clouds, my father—blind drunk and raging at the world—killed me with a blow that was meant to “teach me a lesson.” In those final moments, as my breath rattled and faded, I finally understood. I understood her desperation. I understood her hate. And I understood that the “family” I had protected was really just a cage. 01 “You worthless bitch! I gave you a roof, I gave you food, and you try to run?” My father’s roar vibrated in my chest. Hank was a mountain of a man, his face twisted into something demonic as he swung the leather strap. My mother was suspended from the oak branch, her clothes tattered, blood blooming like dark roses on her skin. She didn’t even have the strength to scream anymore. Granny Ruth stood on the porch, her arms crossed over her chest, a look of profound disgust on her weathered face. “I told you she was a flighty thing, Hank. You should’ve kept her in the basement on a chain. You’re too soft.” She spat on the dirt. “If it wasn’t for this little girl speaking up, she’d be halfway to the interstate by now. We don’t have the cash to buy you another wife, son.” Mom managed to lift her head. The warmth that used to be in her eyes—the way she used to tuck my hair behind my ears—was gone. There was only a cold, jagged loathing. “You little demon,” she rasped, her voice a ghost of itself. “I should have smothered you in your sleep.” Hank reached for a heavy iron pry bar, swearing he’d break her legs so she’d never take another step toward the road. I paused, clutching my piece of honey-toast. I looked at her, my face smudged with dirt, and forced a smile that I hoped looked both innocent and chilling. “Daddy, if you break her legs, who’s going to hoe the garden?” Hank hesitated. The logic of the harvest won out over his rage. He cursed, dropped the bar, and grabbed a heavy rusted chain from the back of his truck. He looped it around her neck like a dog. “I’ll break ’em after the corn is in,” he growled. After he left to go play cards and drink with the neighbors, I crept out to the yard. I managed to get her down and brought her a bowl of cold scraps. “Mommy, eat,” I whispered. She jerked her head away, her lip curling. With a sudden burst of energy, she slapped the bowl out of my hand and spat in my face. “Get away from me! You’re not mine. You’re one of them.” I stood there, the cold grease from the scraps dripping down my cheek. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a cold hand. Hank chose that moment to stumble back into the yard. Hearing her shout, he didn’t even hesitate. He kicked her off the porch steps and followed her down, his boots connecting with her ribs. “I’ve been too damn nice to you!” he screamed. He dragged her by the hair toward the side shed, the chain rattling against the stones. “You sleep on the dirt from now on,” he barked. He turned to me, his eyes bloodshot and impatient. “Hey, brat. If she tries to touch you again, you tell me or your Granny. You hear?” I nodded obediently. He grunted, stumbling toward the house. “You’re gonna be worth a few thousand in a couple of years,” he muttered to himself. “Better not let you die yet.” Late that night, after the house fell into a heavy, alcohol-soaked silence, I crept into the shed. She was shivering on the ground, her skin burning with fever. Granny kept all the medicine locked in a tin box; she said “strays and traitors” didn’t deserve it. I spent the night dipping a rag into a bucket of cold water, wiping her brow over and over. I sat there in the dark, hugging my knees. This was Day One of my second chance. In my first life, this was the beginning of the end. I had been brainwashed into thinking “family” was sacred, that her escape was a betrayal of me. So I told on her. And I watched her die. This time, I had turned her in again—but only to save her legs. I knew if she ran that day, Hank would have caught her at the trailhead and crippled her for life. I was smarter now. I knew she was a prisoner. I knew I was the child of a monster. This time, I wasn’t going to keep her here. I was going to be the one to open the gate. 02 “Get up, you lazy cow! It’s noon! Where’s my lunch?” Hank kicked the shed door open, his heavy boot prodding her limp body. When she didn’t move, he cursed and yelled back toward the house. “Ma! Give this bitch some aspirin or something. I don’t need her kicking the bucket yet.” “City girls,” Granny grumbled from the porch. “Fragile as glass.” I spent the day hovering over her. When she finally woke in the evening, her eyes struggled to focus on me. I held out a bowl of mashed potatoes, trying to look helpful. “Mommy, please eat.” She didn’t take the food. Instead, she used her last ounce of strength to grab my arm, her fingers digging in like claws. “Why? Why did you tell them?” The agony in her voice was a physical weight. I swallowed my tears and put on the mask of a brainwashed child. “Mommy, you and Daddy are supposed to be together. We’re a family. I’m just trying to keep us whole.” She stared at me like I was a stranger—a monster she had birthed. Then, she started to laugh, a dry, hacking sound. “My mistake. I thought you were my daughter. I forgot you have his blood in your veins. You were born rotten.” Her words cut deeper than any belt. In that moment, I knew I had lost her forever. She would never love me again. I remembered Granny once saying I was a “mistake” Mom had fought to keep. Mom had been skin and bones, yet she had nursed me and shared every scrap of her food with me. Before the bitterness took over, she used to hold me at night and whisper, “Daisy, hold on. Just a little longer. Mommy’s gonna get us out.” Everyone else called me “brat” or “worthless,” but she had named me Daisy. She told me I was her little bit of sunshine in the dark. But now, Daisy was dead to her. I was just another jailer. It didn’t matter. I still loved her. In my last life, I heard Hank bragging that he had let her try to escape that first time. He wanted to see if she was still “broken-in.” If she tried to run, he knew he had to beat the hope out of her once and for all. That’s why I told. I had to stop her from running into a trap. This time, I would ensure she ran when the path was clear. I would send her back to her real life, even if I couldn’t go with her. 03 As soon as she could stand, Hank had her back to work. She was a ghost in chains, hauling water, scrubbing floors, and working the garden. Hank spent his days at the local dive bar. When he lost at cards, he’d come home and take it out on her, calling her a “jinx.” I stayed in the shadows, forced to watch. After his rage was spent, he would drag her into the bedroom. I’d huddle in the hallway, listening to her muffled cries and his heavy, triumphant breathing. On the porch, Granny Ruth would listen too, a sickening smile stretching her wrinkles. “We’ll have a grandson soon,” she’d prune. She looked like a ghoul in the yellow porch light, a predator waiting for fresh meat. Under the cover of night, I started slipping away to the woods behind our shack. The briars tore at my skin, leaving me bloody, but I didn’t care. I knew the plants Mom used to talk about. I gathered what I needed and hid the herbs in a hollow log near the creek. The house sat on the hill like a squat, ugly beast, swallowing Mom’s life whole. At dawn, I’d be up to fix breakfast, trying to give her a few extra minutes of rest. “The brat’s actually useful for something,” Hank remarked one morning over his bacon. Granny Ruth tilted my chin up, inspecting me like a heifer at an auction. “She’s got her mother’s looks. She’ll fetch a high price when she’s of age. We’ll get our money back and then some.” I kept my eyes down, playing the part of the vacant, obedient doll. A month passed. Mom was getting weaker, the light in her eyes flickering out. She looked like she had finally given up. My heart ached, but I couldn’t comfort her. She looked at me with pure loathing every time I came near. Then came the news: she was pregnant again. Hank was ecstatic. “A son! Finally, an heir!” Granny actually gave her an egg for breakfast, a “reward” for her fertility. But that night, the silence was shattered by a scream that sounded like a dying animal. Mom had thrown herself against the corner of the heavy wooden dresser, over and over, until the life inside her was gone. Blood soaked the floorboards. Hank was incandescent with rage. He kicked her square in the chest. “You bitch! You killed my son!” Mom lay in the blood, her face pale as bone, but her eyes—for the first time in months—were blazing. “I will never,” she spat, “bear another monster for a rapist like you.” The word monster hit me like a physical blow. I knew she meant me. “You’re here to breed, and if you won’t do it willingly, I’ll beat it into you!” Hank screamed. He lashed her until she stopped moving, then tied her to the bedpost so she couldn’t even crawl away. From that night on, she wasn’t even allowed in the shed. He moved her to the pigpen. 04 She was treated like livestock now, chained in the muck of the pigpen with nothing but a thin layer of straw. Her clothes were rags, stained with old blood. When a neighbor stopped by and asked about the “city girl,” Hank just shrugged. “She’s a stubborn one. Lost the boy on purpose. Needs a firm hand.” The neighbor, an old man with yellow teeth, just chuckled. “They’re all like that. A woman ain’t a woman if she ain’t breeding. Hit her a few more times. Or, if she’s really a problem, just knock her upside the head until she’s simple. She’ll be easier to handle then.” Hank rubbed his chin. “But who’ll do the work if she’s simple?” The old man pointed at me. “The little one’s getting big. She looks handy.” Hank’s eyes lit up. “You’re right, Silas. You’re always right.” I stood by the pump, my blood running cold. My time was running out. I couldn’t wait any longer. “If you want her to be a good broodmare, you gotta feed her a bit,” Silas added. “Can’t have her dying before you get your money’s worth.” Hank nodded begrudgingly. Over the next month, he “fattened her up” like a hog for slaughter, forcing food down her throat when she refused to eat. Labor Day was three days away. In our town, that meant a big community BBQ and plenty of moonshine. I walked into the pigpen and knelt in the mud in front of her. She was a shell of the woman she had been. “Get out, you little parasite,” she hissed without opening her eyes. I looked at her, memorizing the curve of her jaw, the way her hair used to smell like lavender before it smelled like rot. “Mommy,” I whispered. “The holiday is coming. You’re going to see your real family soon. Aren’t you happy?” She let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “See them? In hell, maybe. I’ll see them when I finally kill your father and then myself.” I looked down, my heart breaking in silence. 05 The Labor Day BBQ was the biggest event of the year. The house was full of the town’s worst men and their weary wives. Granny had me up at 4:00 AM to start the prep. She actually let us have a big pot of pork stew and cornbread. While I stirred the pot, standing on a chair, I slipped in the powdered herbs I’d been collecting for weeks. It wasn’t enough to kill—just enough to induce a deep, heavy sleep that felt like a coma. Hank and Granny wouldn’t let Mom or me eat the “good” food. That was my saving grace. By 8:00 PM, the sun had dropped, and the hollow was pitch black. One by one, the men and women in the yard began to slump over. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I whistled into the darkness, and a shadow moved near the treeline. It was Benny. Everyone called him “Simple Benny,” the local handyman who never said a word. But I knew better. I had seen him watching the house with eyes that were far too sharp for a fool. Benny moved with a soldier’s precision. He unlocked Mom’s chains and threw a heavy coat over her shoulders. Mom stared at him, bewildered. “Who are you?” “No time,” Benny whispered, his voice low and cultured—not the local drawl. “I’m an undercover agent. I’ve been trying to get enough evidence on this ring for months. Daisy told me tonight was the night. We have to move.” I handed Mom a small bundle. “Mommy, there’s some bread and water in here. For the road.” She pushed me away so hard I hit the muddy ground. “Stay away from me! Is this another trick? Are you calling them now?” I clutched my scraped elbow, unable to speak. Benny stepped between us. “She saved you, Stella. That first time you tried to run? It was a set-up. Hank was waiting in the brush with a shotgun. Daisy knew. She turned you in to keep you alive. She’s the reason I’m here.” Mom froze. She looked at me, her expression a chaotic map of shock and dawning realization. She reached out and pulled me into a fierce, trembling hug. For a second, I was back in the “before.” I breathed in the scent of her, even through the grime. Just a second longer, I prayed. Let me remember this. “Lights!” Benny hissed. I looked toward the village. Torches were flickering. The neighbors who hadn’t come to our house were mobilizing. Someone must have seen Benny. “Go!” I shouted. “They’re coming!” “Run!” Benny grabbed Mom’s arm. “This is the only shot!” They disappeared into the brush. I watched them go, then turned toward the approaching lights. A group of men, led by the town’s sheriff, were charging up the hill. “She’s heading for the ridge!” someone screamed. I took a deep breath and began to run—not toward Mom, but in the exact opposite direction. I wore an old shawl of hers, letting it flutter behind me like a signal. “There she is! Don’t let the bitch get away!” I scrambled through the thorns, my lungs burning, my legs screaming. A sharp pain exploded in my calf—a pitchfork or a stray bullet, I didn’t know. I kept moving until I reached the Devil’s Drop—a sheer cliff overlooking the river. I looked back. The torches were close. I could see Hank’s face, red with fury. I smiled. They’d never catch her now.

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The fire from two years ago was a monster that swallowed everything, leaving me to live in its charred ribs. It was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. When the firefighter’s voice cracked through the smoke, rasping that he could only carry one of us, my mother didn’t hesitate. She pointed straight at me, simply because I was closer to the door. At the time, I thought I was lucky. I thought it was love. It wasn’t until later, when she convinced herself the fire had been started by us—a botched attempt to rob the neighbors—that the “luck” turned into a life sentence. She would grab me by the hair, her voice a jagged blade. “Your sister was perfect! She was the bright one! She would never have stolen anything!” “It was you! You’re the thief! You’re the one who killed her!” From that day on, I became a ghost in my own home. I was the surplus daughter, the shadow that didn’t deserve to be fed or clothed. Every night, I was forced to kneel before my sister’s portrait, a silent penitent for a crime I didn’t commit. The day the class field trip fund went missing at school, my mother didn’t even ask if I’d done it. She just grabbed me, dragging me toward the door, screaming that she was going to make me bow and beg for forgiveness from every student in that building. Terrified, I tore myself from her grip and bolted into the street. I didn’t see the car. I only felt the impact that sent me flying. As I lay there, the world fading to gray, I dialed her number with trembling fingers. I begged her to save me. But all I heard from the other end was a cold, cruel snort. “Who are you trying to scam now? You stole your sister’s life two years ago. If you’re dying, it’s finally justice.” I died that night. Two years later, the sister everyone thought was ash walked back through the front door. She told the truth through her tears: she was the one who had been stealing that night. My mother broke. She dragged my sister to every house in the neighborhood, knocking on doors, sobbing the same words over and over: “My Maren wasn’t a thief. She really wasn’t…” 1 The impact tossed me ten feet. I hit the pavement with a sound like a bag of wet glass. Everything—every bone, every nerve—shattered. It was a rainy night. The streetlights were dim, casting sickly yellow puddles on the asphalt. The driver didn’t even get out. He rolled down his window, muttered something about a “stupid stray dog,” and sped off into the dark. The cold began to seep in, a deep, hollow chill. But I didn’t want to die. Not like this. I fumbled for my phone and called my mother. When she picked up, she didn’t even give me a chance to speak. “So, you steal the class fund and then run away? You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” “Mom,” I wheezed, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. “I got hit… by a car. Please. Help me.” There was a pause. A few seconds of silence where I thought maybe, just maybe, she’d hear the rattle in my chest. Then, she laughed. “You’re a pathological liar, Maren. You’re just scared because you got caught. You stole your sister’s future, her entire life. Honestly? You should have died a long time ago.” The line went dead. The dial tone was the last thing I heard over the roar of the downpour. Suddenly, the fight left me. I couldn’t even bring myself to dial 911. What was the point? Two years ago, my sister Lacey and I were trapped in the upstairs bedroom while the house burned. The heat was an animal. The firefighter said he could only take one. My mother chose me because I was two feet closer to the hallway. Afterward, she told me, “Maren, you only have a heartbeat because your sister gave hers up for you.” When the investigators found the neighbor’s jewelry in our living room and saw the pry marks on their back door, the narrative was set. Everyone decided we had broken in, and the fire was a freak accident caused by our clumsiness. That was the day the beatings started. My mother would whip my back with a wooden yardstick until it snapped, forcing me to kneel before Lacey’s photo. “Your sister was an honors student! She was the good one! She wouldn’t steal!” “You’re the thief! You killed her! Why couldn’t it have been you?” I tried to explain. I tried to tell her I didn’t know anything about the jewelry. But she had already decided I was the villain. And maybe she was right. If she hadn’t picked me, Lacey would be the one breathing. Lacey would have been worth the oxygen. She was burned alive. I couldn’t even imagine that pain. So, I stopped talking. I let my mother use me as a punching bag for her grief. For two years, I lived on scraps. I wore rags. “Your sister died hungry,” she’d say, pulling the plate away. “So you stay hungry.” “Think about how cold she is in the ground. You don’t deserve that coat.” “You stole her life. You spend every second making up for it.” I spent seven hundred days atoning. And now, lying in a pool of my own blood in the rain, the debt was finally settled. She wouldn’t have to hit me anymore. She’d finally be satisfied. As my eyes drifted shut, a strange, light feeling washed over me. My last thought wasn’t of pain. It was a wish: I hope she saved Lacey instead. 2 Apparently, the universe wasn’t finished with me yet. My penance wasn’t over. I felt myself drift upward, hovering over the street. Below me, I saw the girl I used to be. She looked like a heap of discarded laundry, her limbs twisted at impossible angles, her face swollen beyond recognition. No wonder the driver thought I was a dog. I tried to feel sad, but a violent tug—like a hook in my navel—jerked me away. In the blink of an eye, I was back in our cramped living room. My mother was on the phone with my principal. “Mrs. Higgins, I am so sorry for the trouble,” she was saying, her voice thick with performative shame. “I know she took the money. I’ll make her write a three-thousand-word apology. I’ll make her confess in front of the whole school tomorrow.” “Diane, please,” Mrs. Higgins replied. “Security is still checking the tapes. We don’t have proof yet. Let’s not jump to conclusions.” My mother let out a sharp, jagged laugh. “I know my daughter. She’s been a thief since she was in diapers. She stole two hundred dollars from my purse just last month. She needs to learn a lesson she’ll never forget.” I shivered, even though I didn’t have a body. Even as a soul, she could still make me flinch. I remembered that two hundred dollars. She had screamed at me for hours, slapping me until my ears rang, demanding I tell her where I hid it. I cried until my throat was raw, until I couldn’t even whisper “I didn’t do it.” When I wouldn’t “confess,” she stripped me down to my underwear and dragged me out onto the sidewalk in broad daylight. “If you won’t admit you’re a thief, then everyone can see what a thief looks like,” she told the neighbors. People stared. Some laughed. I just curled into a ball on the concrete, trying to disappear into myself. Eventually, the lady from the HOA came over and wrapped a blanket around me. She looked at my mother and said, “Diane, didn’t you pay the gardener two hundred in cash on Tuesday? I saw you hand it to him.” My mother froze. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t hug me. She just threw my clothes at my head and grumbled, “If you didn’t take it, why didn’t you just say so clearly?” But I had. I had told her a hundred times. You just didn’t want to believe me, Mom. To you, I was a thief by birthright. A ghostly tear slipped down my cheek and landed on her forehead. She blinked, looking up at the ceiling, wondering if the roof was leaking. She wiped it away with a look of pure disgust. “You don’t understand, Mrs. Higgins,” she continued. “She’s the reason my oldest daughter is dead. She broke into a house and started a fire. She’s a criminal.” Lacey and I were twins. We were in the same grade. The principal knew the history. There was a long silence on the other end. “Diane… the past is the past. Maren is your only child now. She’s a good kid. I don’t believe she did this. I’ll call you when we have the facts.” The principal hung up before my mother could argue. It was a strange feeling—to be dead and finally have someone take my side. It felt like a warm light, but it was followed immediately by the bitter sting of iron. 3 After the call, the anger seemed to drain out of her, replaced by that haunting, soft madness she reserved for Lacey. She picked up the framed photo of my sister and began to dust it with a silk cloth. For two years, I hadn’t seen her look at me with anything but hatred. But for Lacey? She had all the tenderness in the world. She whispered to the photo. She hummed a lullaby. Could Lacey hear her? I didn’t know. All I knew was that it was 2:00 AM, her living daughter was missing, and she didn’t care. She probably thought I was hiding out, too ashamed of my “crime” to come home. Suddenly, a white-hot flash of pain shot through my leg. It felt like a serrated blade tearing through muscle. The tug happened again. I was back at the crash site. A stray dog had found me. It had torn a chunk out of my calf and was now sniffing at my chest. It began to claw at my clothes, shredding the old, tattered winter coat I was wearing. The yellowed stuffing flew out like dirty snow. That coat was two years old. It was thin, patched a dozen times, and the sleeves were three inches too short. I’d spent the whole winter shivering. A few days ago, I’d gathered the courage to ask for a new one. She’d backhanded me so hard I hit the wall. “How can you be so selfish? You think you’re cold? Think about Lacey in the ground. Is she warm? You’re a thief—if you want a coat so bad, go steal one!” Now, the dog had stripped the coat away entirely. It began to bite into my stomach. “Stop! Get away!” I screamed, kicking at the animal. But my foot passed right through its fur. I tried to grab its collar, but my hands were smoke. I was forced to watch as the dog desecrated what was left of me. I remembered my mother’s curse the day she found out Lacey was gone. “Maren! Why couldn’t it have been you? I hope you rot in a ditch!” Well, Mom. Your wish came true. Finally, a man approached. He had a heavy stick and chased the dog away. I felt a surge of relief. Someone would see me. They’d call the police. My mother would have to come for me. But the man didn’t reach for a phone. He knelt down, squinting at my broken body. A slow, horrific grin spread across his face. He was a drifter. Someone who lived in the cracks of society, someone with no light left in his soul. He began to drag me by my ankles toward the treeline. I knew what was coming. I panicked. “No! Leave me here! Please!” But I was just a whisper in the wind. The tug happened again. Back to my mother. I stood right in front of her, screaming into her face. “Mom! Please! Go to the woods by the highway! Help me!” She didn’t hear a thing. She just smiled to herself and pulled a brand-new, expensive down parka out of a shopping bag. It was soft pink with a cute logo on the chest. It was exactly what a girl my age would have dreamed of. My heart—the ghost of it—stilled for a second. Then it shattered. She walked to the backyard, put the coat in a metal fire pit, and lit a match. “Are you warm enough now, sweetie?” she whispered to the air, watching the flames lick the pink fabric. “I realized today you’ve probably grown. Your old clothes must be too small. Mommy is so sorry she didn’t notice sooner.” The fire roared, casting a warm, golden glow over the yard. But I had never felt so cold in my life. 4 The next afternoon, my mother went to the grocery store and bought a massive basket of fruit. She picked up two apples—they were on sale. But then she paused, put them back, and filled the basket with expensive, ripe mangoes. I am deathly allergic to mangoes. They were Lacey’s favorite. Mom, you really never forget, do you? She took the fruit to my classmates’ houses. Every time a door opened, she began her rehearsed apology. “I am so incredibly sorry. My daughter stole the class money. Please, take this as compensation. She’s always been like this—a thief. She even caused the fire that killed her sister.” She went house to house, spreading the poison. People looked confused, uncomfortable. But I understood. She wanted a jury. She wanted the whole world to join her in hating me, because if everyone hated me, then it wasn’t her fault that Lacey was dead. But it didn’t matter anymore. My body was currently being treated like garbage in a shallow grave in the woods. Rumors can’t hurt a corpse. The last house was the worst: Sarah’s house. Sarah was my desk mate. And after the fire, she was my primary tormentor. She led the “Thief” chants, scribbled slurs on my notebooks, and once cornered me in the bathroom to kick me until I bruised. I’d begged my mother to intervene once. She’d just looked at me with dead eyes. “Lacey was burned alive. You got a few bruises. Get over it.” One day, Sarah had held me down and tried to force hot sauce down my throat. I’d pushed her away, coughing and gagging. The school called our parents. Sarah lied through her teeth. “Maren is a thief! She stole my snack, so I was just teaching her a lesson!” “What did she steal?” the principal asked. “A mango!” Sarah blurted out. “I brought a mango for lunch and it was gone after gym. It had to be her.” My mother knew about my allergy. She knew a single bite of a mango would put me in the ER. One word from her would have exposed the lie. I looked at her, pleading. Tell them, Mom. Please. She didn’t even look at me. She just slapped me across the face. “I was wondering where that mango came from yesterday! How could I raise such a thief?” I was stunned. You knew, Mom. You knew. Why did you choose the bully over your own blood? The memory made my ghostly stomach churn. I remembered the feeling of the hot sauce—the burning in my throat, my lungs, my gut. I’d thought that was the worst pain imaginable. I was wrong. Being hated by the woman who gave you life is much, much worse. When she got home, the neighbor, Mrs. Gable, was waiting by the fence. She looked pale. “Diane, did you hear? They found a body in the woods by the bypass. The police are looking for the family.” She shuddered. “They say it’s gruesome. Hit by a car, ravaged by animals… and then some vagrant dragged it off. My God, imagine the poor child.” My mother nodded solemnly. “That is horrific. Some people are just monsters.” Mom, you finally think I’m a victim. Then Mrs. Gable frowned. “Wait, where’s your youngest? I haven’t seen her in two days. Is she okay?” My mother gave a dismissive little snort. “I wish it were her. After what she did to her sister, how does she even have the nerve to keep breathing? If that body in the woods is hers, after all that suffering… well, maybe she finally paid her sister back.” She talked about me like I was a piece of litter. Mrs. Gable looked horrified. “Diane, maybe you should call the station. Just to be sure.” “She’s too smart for that,” my mother said, turning toward the door. “She’s just hiding because she stole that money. Let her stay out there. When she gets hungry enough, she’ll come crawling back. And then? Then she’s really going to get it.” I let out a hollow, silent laugh. Mom, I’m never coming back. Suddenly, a black sedan pulled into the driveway. The door opened, and a girl stepped out. She looked so much like me—the same eyes, the same hair. My mother’s face twisted into a snarl. She marched toward the girl, hand raised to strike. “You little brat, you finally showed your—” She stopped. Her hand hovered in the air. Her entire body began to shake, and tears flooded her eyes. “Lacey? Is that… is that you?” “Lacey, my baby… you’re home. Tell me I’m not dreaming.” I watched as my sister—the girl who had been dead for two years—stepped into the light and hugged our mother.

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My parents finally tracked me down in the fourth year of my exile. When they saw me, there were no warm embraces, no tears of relief. They didn’t ask if I’d spent my nights sleeping in shelters or if I’d gone days without a meal. They didn’t care about the hollows in my cheeks or the callouses on my hands. Instead, my father’s voice cut through the damp air of my tiny apartment like a blade. “Do you finally realize the gravity of what you did?” I didn’t hesitate. I dropped to my knees on the cold, cracked linoleum. The tears came instantly—ugly, desperate, and loud. I let them see my breaking point. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed, my forehead nearly touching the floor. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been jealous of Courtney. I shouldn’t have fought with her. I never should have tried to frame her. Please, just tell me what I have to do!” After they brought me back to that sprawling estate on the hill, I became exactly what they wanted. I was a shadow. I was silent. I didn’t ask for things, and I didn’t fight back. Even when Courtney went out of her way to provoke me, poking at the bruises of my past, I kept my mouth shut. My parents were thrilled. They told their friends I had finally “matured.” They were proud of the girl they had broken. But then came the day Courtney sold the company’s most sensitive trade secrets to our biggest competitor. Overnight, the Whitaker empire began to crumble into ash. My parents panicked. They turned to me, their eyes wide with a desperate, newfound need. This time, I just watched them. I didn’t say a word. I felt nothing but the cold, quiet satisfaction of a ghost watching a fire. 1 When my parents found me, I was crouched on the floor of a basement studio, counting nickels and dimes to see if I had enough for a sausage roll. My father, Robert, looked down at me with a gaze so complex it bordered on disgust. “Natalie, do you understand your mistake now?” I froze for a heartbeat. Then, I let myself collapse. I hit the floor hard, the sound echoing against the thin walls. I let the tears flow until my vision blurred. “I know,” I choked out. “I was a monster. I shouldn’t have competed for your love. I shouldn’t have lied about her, or screamed at her, or hit her… it’s all my fault. I’ll never do it again, I swear.” “I shouldn’t have talked back to you. I shouldn’t have run away. I’m so sorry.” “Dad, Mom… I just want to come home.” My mother, Diane, finally softened. Her eyes turned a watery red as she reached out to pull me up. “That’s enough. Get up, Natalie.” Robert sighed, the tension in his shoulders dropping an inch. “As long as you’ve learned your lesson. Let’s go.” I nodded obediently, following them to the sleek black SUV waiting outside. I was the picture of a broken, repentant daughter. Everything had shifted four years ago when Courtney appeared. Suddenly, the affection and the life that had been mine by right were handed to her on a silver platter. I had fought for my place. I had screamed until my throat was raw; I had begged on my knees. But Robert and Diane had only watched me with icy detachment, as if I were a stranger throwing a tantrum in a grocery store. The breaking point was the day my college acceptance letters arrived. I had been on track for an Ivy League—my grades were perfect. But when I logged into the portal, I found my entire application had been withdrawn and replaced with a late submission to a predatory, unaccredited trade school in the middle of nowhere. Courtney had done it. I knew it. When I confronted her, she just looked at me with those wide, tear-filled eyes. “Why would I do that, Natalie? You must have filled out the forms wrong. Why are you blaming me?” I had been so blinded by rage I reached for her, wanting to shake the truth out of her. My mother slammed me back against the wall before I could touch a hair on Courtney’s head. Diane looked at me like I was a rabid animal. “Ever since your sister came home, she has tried to include you, and this is how you thank her? By inventing these delusions? You are a selfish, ungrateful child.” I saw red. “I’m not lying! Look at the IP logs! Check the history!” “Check what?” Robert barked, his brow furrowed in deep irritation. “You’re just acting out because we’ve been giving Courtney the attention she deserves. You’re pathetic.” “You think I’d destroy my own future just to spite her?” I screamed, my heart breaking in real-time. Robert’s voice was like ice. “In a heartbeat. You can’t stand her. You’d burn the whole house down just to see her cough.” “You only love her!” I yelled. “You only believe her!” That was the end. Robert pointed to the door, his face purple with rage. “Ungrateful brat! I’ve spent eighteen years providing for you! If you hate this family so much, then get out! Get out and see how long you last without my money!” I left that night. I thought I was strong. I thought I could survive on spite alone. Reality gave me a brutal wake-up call. I didn’t survive—I barely drifted. For four years, I delivered food, scrubbed toilets, and handed out fliers in the rain. I was fired from every decent job because I lacked the stability or the degrees I should have had. I ended up in a moldy basement, unable to even pay for the community college courses I tried to take. Now, we were back at the estate. As I stepped out of the car, I saw Courtney. Her skin was porcelain, her hair a perfect silk curtain. She was wearing a white cocktail dress that made her look like a modern-day princess. Beside her, I felt like a stray dog. She smiled and moved forward, linking her arm through mine. “I knew you’d want the master suite, Natalie. I’ve already moved my things into the guest wing and aired it out for you.” “Let’s put the past behind us,” she whispered, her voice like honey. “Can we just be sisters now?” I remembered how this started. When Courtney first arrived, she wanted my room. She didn’t ask for it directly; she just sighed about how “dreamy” it was while my parents were listening. They spent weeks trying to convince me to switch. I refused, clinging to the only space that felt mine. Courtney didn’t argue. She just started acting terrified of me. Every time I entered a room, she would flinch. My parents saw it. They saw a victim and a bully. They had screamed at me in the living room. “She’s been through so much, and you can’t even give her a room? You’re giving it up today, whether you like it or not!” Back then, I was furious. I thought she was a thief. Now, looking at her, I realized how absurd I’d been. She was the biological daughter. I was the “adopted” replacement, an abandoned infant who had occupied her seat for twenty years. When the real heir returns, shouldn’t she get her room back? “No, Courtney,” I said, waving my hands frantically, my voice trembling with feigned nerves. “I… I prefer the smaller room. It feels safer. Really.” Courtney blinked, her eyes instantly shimmering with unshed tears. “Natalie, are you still mad at me? I was so young then… please don’t hate me.” The atmosphere shifted. My mother’s face darkened. “Look at your sister, Natalie. She’s trying so hard to welcome you, and you’re still being difficult?” Robert stepped closer, his shadow looming over me. “She doesn’t owe you anything. Take the room she prepared, or you can go back to that slum you crawled out of.” I nodded quickly, my head ducked. “I’ll take the room. Thank you, Courtney.” The tension broke. They were satisfied. They sent the housekeeper, Maria, to show me upstairs. 2 At dinner, the silence was heavy until Robert spoke up. “We’re hosting a gala this weekend. It’s time to officially announce Natalie’s return to the social circle.” I stole a glance at Courtney. She was staring into her soup, her knuckles white as she gripped her spoon. She wasn’t happy. “Actually, Dad,” I said softly, “we don’t need to do that. Courtney didn’t have a big gala when she arrived. It wouldn’t be fair to her.” Courtney looked up, her expression a mask of sudden sorrow. “Is that what you think? That I’m holding you back from your place in this family?” I panicked. “No! That’s not it at all—” Robert slammed his hand on the table. “Your sister didn’t have a gala because we were dealing with the transition! Now we want to do something nice for you, and you’re being ungrateful again?” Diane’s eyes were cold. “Four years away didn’t teach you any manners, did it? You’re still just as spoiled and entitled as the day you left.” Before I could defend myself, Courtney began to sob. “Don’t blame her, Mom. It’s my fault. I took away her status when I came back. It’s only natural she hates me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, velvet box, sliding it across the table toward me. “I bought this for you. To welcome you home.” I looked at her, watching the performance. I felt a flicker of the old irritation, but I suppressed it. I took the box. “Thank you,” I said, my voice flat. She gave a fragile, watery smile. “I think I’ll go to my room now. I have a headache.” My parents watched her walk away with hearts in their eyes. The moment she was gone, the lecture began. “She spends her own money on a gift for you, and you treat her like she’s an inconvenience,” Diane hissed. “Look at the woman she’s become compared to you.” Robert let out a sharp, disgusted grunt. “A total lack of gratitude. You’re lucky we even let you back in this house.” I kept my head down. I didn’t say a word. “Aah—!” A piercing scream shattered the quiet from the second floor. It was Courtney. We scrambled up the stairs and burst into her room. Courtney was standing by her vanity, shaking violently. Her jewelry drawers were ripped open, and her necklaces and bracelets were strewn across the floor, snapped and mangled. “What happened?” Diane gasped, rushing to her side. Courtney’s voice was a jagged whisper. “I don’t know… I came in to change for bed, and everything… it was all destroyed.” Robert’s face turned a dangerous shade of red. He turned to Maria, who was hovering in the doorway. “Who was in here this afternoon?” Maria looked at me, her eyes filled with pity. “I… I saw Natalie go in earlier.” My heart hammered against my ribs. I had gone in. I’d found one of her designer earrings by the hallway sink and wanted to return it. “I was in there, but—” “I don’t care about the jewelry,” Courtney interrupted, her voice breaking. She picked up the shattered remains of a heavy jade-and-gold bracelet. “But this… this was the heirloom Grandma gave me. It’s the only thing I had that felt like I truly belonged. Natalie, why? Why would you break this?” She turned and ran toward the door, sobbing. Diane caught her, holding her tight, and then turned her fury on me. “What is wrong with you?” Diane screamed. “I didn’t do it,” I said, my own voice beginning to shake. “Who else would?” Robert roared. “You think she smashed her own grandmother’s heirloom just to make you look bad? You’re sick, Natalie. You’re truly sick.” The scene was a carbon copy of four years ago. Courtney’s tears were the only currency that mattered in this house. If she cried, I was the villain. Case closed. Robert pointed toward my room. “Get out of my sight. Go to your room and don’t come out until I say so!” I turned and walked away in silence. 3 Hours later, my door creaked open. Courtney slipped inside, a sharp, mocking grin replacing her tears. “Did you like your homecoming gift?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe. I looked at her. “You smashed that bracelet yourself just to frame me. Why?” She let out a soft, tinkling laugh. “Of course I did. I left the earring by the sink as bait. I knew you’d be ‘helpful’ enough to bring it back.” I frowned. “I’ve done everything you wanted since I got back. I’ve stayed out of your way. Why are you still doing this?” The smile vanished from her face, replaced by a cold, concentrated venom. “Out of my way? You should have stayed in the gutter where you belong.” “You think I didn’t know?” she spat, moving closer. “When your rent got lowered out of nowhere? When that neighbor ‘randomly’ took you to the ER when you had that fever? When you got that job lead right after being fired? You thought that was luck?” I froze. Those things had happened. I thought the universe had finally taken pity on me. “That was them,” she hissed. “Mom and Dad were secretly helping you the whole time. They couldn’t let their ‘other’ daughter starve.” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Where were they when my foster father was beating me? When I was eating scraps off the floor to survive? I am the real Whitaker! Why should I suffer for twenty years while you lived like a princess?” I looked at her twisted face and felt a strange surge of pity. My parents had given her everything since she returned—the status, the jewels, the unconditional belief. They would have given her their very souls if she asked. But it wasn’t enough for her. She was obsessed with the crumbs they had dropped for me. “You should leave,” I said, my voice steady. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let a lunatic like you win.” She stared at me, then laughed again. “Not going anywhere? Fine. Have it your way.” She reached out, grabbed a heavy ceramic vase from my nightstand, and slammed it against her own forehead. The sound was sickening. Crack. “Natalie, please! Stop! I’m sorry!” she screamed, dropping to the floor. Footsteps thundered down the hall. Diane burst in first, dropping to her knees to cradle Courtney’s bleeding head. “Courtney! Oh my god, what happened?” Courtney huddled into her, sobbing hysterically. “I don’t know what I said… I just wanted to talk… she just picked it up and hit me…” “Shut up!” Robert screamed at me before I could even draw breath. “Have you ever once been anything but a curse to this family?” “I wish we’d let you rot in the street,” he spat, his eyes filled with genuine loathing. “It would have saved us all the grief.” They didn’t look at me again. They scooped Courtney up and rushed her to the hospital, leaving me standing in the middle of my room, surrounded by shadows.

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I couldn’t help but smirk. On the very night Judy Bell secured her first Best Actress nomination—a feat built entirely on the back of my sweat and influence—she stood before a swarm of reporters and accused me of being a tyrant. Into the glowing lens of the cameras, she wept about how “the machine” had stifled her soul, how she had been forced into a hyper-sexualized brand, and how every stitch of clothing she wore was a calculated move by a cold, corporate hand. My hand. She declared to the world that tonight, she was finally breaking her chains. She was going to prove that an artist could shine without the shadow of “big industry money” looming over them. The media ate it up. They hailed her as a brave revolutionary, a woman of integrity standing up to the big, bad wolf of Hollywood. I didn’t argue. I simply picked up my phone, dialed the chairperson of the awards committee, and gave them a simple instruction: “Change of plans for tonight. Give the trophy to someone who actually knows how to follow a script.” 1 I discovered Judy when she was eighteen. I found her at a back-alley industry party in a town that thrives on devouring girls like her. She was terrified, dressed in next to nothing, surrounded by a circle of aging vultures who were planning which hotel room she’d be delivered to after the appetizers were finished. When my assistant first briefed me on her, I felt a rare pang of genuine pity. She came from a broken home in a Rust Belt town where daughters were liabilities and sons were kings. Her parents were degenerate gamblers who had racked up debts that would take three lifetimes to pay off. To keep them afloat, she’d been coerced into filming some “private” content—the kind of videos that stay on the internet forever. Once you step into that swamp, there is usually no way out. In a moment of uncharacteristic softness, I stepped in. I bought out her “debts,” scrubbed the internet of her past, and spent years meticulously crafting her image. I hired the best acting coaches to sharpen her raw talent and, piece by piece, I put the clothes back on her that the world had tried so hard to tear off. Now, she thought her wings were strong enough to claw at the person who gave them to her. “The agency gave me my start, yes,” she told a reporter, her voice trembling with practiced emotion. “But I’m tired of being a puppet. I’m tired of the forced ‘sexy’ image and the mandatory dinners with investors. I want the world to know I can make it on my own. My talent is my only currency!” It was a stirring performance. She was poised, articulate, and utterly unafraid of the camera—skills I had spent thousands of dollars teaching her. Because I had shielded her for so long, she actually had a decent reputation in the industry. The fans immediately rallied behind her, screaming about “toxic management” and “corporate greed.” I sat in the back of my Maybach, watching her be escorted into the theater by a phalanx of security guards. I let out a dry laugh. My assistant, Sarah, glanced at me nervously. “Ms. Rossi, she’s probably just trying to generate buzz for the win. It’s a competitive year. Maybe she felt she had to play the victim to get the votes?” “Buzz is one thing; betrayal is another,” I said, my voice cold. “Four of the five nominees in that category are from my agency. It didn’t matter who won—until now. She’s developed an ego she hasn’t earned. She’s not renewing her contract, is she?” Sarah shook her head. “She signaled that she wants to go indie.” “Fine,” I said. “Let’s give her exactly what she wants. Freedom.” Sarah looked stunned. As the head of Apex Talent Group, I’ve spent twenty years navigating the shark-infested waters of this industry. My clients don’t just get rich; they become icons. I’ve treated them like my own children, poured my life into their careers. When actors wanted to retire and live a quiet life, I let them go with grace and a golden parachute. We stayed friends. Judy Bell was the first one to ever try to burn the house down on her way out. Everyone in that room knew that when she spoke of “the machine,” she meant me—Antonia Rossi, the most powerful woman in the business. I watched the hashtags trend. #FreeJudy. #DownWithApex. I smiled and turned to Sarah. “Start the audit. Every cent we’ve spent on her development over the last decade—I want a line-itemized bill. If she wants to be independent, she can start by paying her debts. And tell the PR team to kill her victory spreads. We’re backing Sofia Rossi for the win tonight.” “But Sofia was the dark horse,” Sarah whispered. “Not anymore.” I picked up my phone and made one more call. “Mr. Sterling, there’s been a change in the weather. Stick to the backup plan. Let’s go to a pure popular vote for the final tally. Let the ‘people’ decide.” Judy, let’s see how that “talent” holds up when I’m not the one holding the scale. The car pulled up to the red carpet. I smoothed my gown, stepped out, and was immediately blinded by the flashbulbs. I walked past the shouting reporters without a word, my heels clicking like a countdown on the marble floor. Once inside the VIP lounge, I had barely taken my seat when I saw Judy marching toward me. She looked defiant, her chin tilted at that perfect angle I’d taught her for “strong female lead” roles. “Ms. Rossi.” I leaned back in my chair, giving her a curt nod. My silence was louder than a scream. 2 Judy faltered for a second, then steeled herself. “Don’t hate me, Antonia. I just want to walk my own path. I can’t let you control my every move anymore.” I nodded slowly. The other studio heads around me were already snickering behind their champagne flutes. “You’ve certainly made a splash tonight, Judy,” the CEO of Paramount Pictures remarked. “Found a new home already? Who’s picking up your tab?” Judy glanced at me, her eyes darting nervously before she regained her bravado. “Actually, no. I’m taking a hiatus. I’m going to be my own boss.” “How brave,” I said. My lack of rage seemed to unsettle her. She wanted a fight; she wanted to be the martyr. “I’m serious, Antonia. From now on, my wardrobe, my scripts, my life—none of it is up for negotiation with the agency.” “Message received,” I said, checking my watch. “Is there anything else? The show is starting.” She bit her lip, frustrated that I wasn’t pleading with her. “I don’t need the ‘handouts’ or the ‘curated’ roles anymore. I’m going to prove that I can get the prestige projects on my own. I want to be like you—a power player.” I looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time in months. In ten years, she had grown into a stunning woman, but she had developed a fatal delusion: she believed she was the chef, when in reality, she was just the finest ingredient in my kitchen. In this town, a “pretty girl with talent” is a commodity. You don’t sit at the table just because you’ve been standing in the room for a long time. I smiled and waved a hand. Sarah appeared instantly. “Ms. Bell’s seat is in the back of the house, I believe. Please show her the way.” Judy’s face flushed. “You’ll see. I’m going to be the biggest thing in this industry.” As she walked away, the man sitting next to me—a cynical old producer named Lou—laughed. “Ambitious girl. Too bad she’s got a paper-thin soul. She doesn’t realize she’s only a star because you keep the sun shining on her.” “You made a mistake with that one, Antonia,” another added. I took a sip of my drink. “She chose her path. Let her walk it until her feet bleed. I’ve already made my ROI on her. If any of you want to sign her tomorrow, be my guest.” They all laughed in unison. “A girl who bites the hand? No thanks. The market is too crowded for ego without leverage.” The ceremony began. I watched the notifications on my phone. The contracts were being drafted. Since she wasn’t renewing, every deal we had in the pipeline for her was being rerouted to other talent. If she wanted to be “free,” she could start with a completely empty calendar. The awards rolled out—Best Screenplay, Best Score, Best Supporting Actress. Apex clients were sweeping. The room kept turning to me with congratulatory nods. “Another banner year for Apex, Antonia!” “We do our best,” I replied, my eyes finding Judy in the back rows. She was sitting tall, waiting for her moment. Finally, it was time for the Best Actress presentation. Judy was asked to come up to the stage early to present a youth achievement award—a small courtesy I’d arranged weeks ago. As she stood there, the host, a man named Jordan Kent, decided to stir the pot. 3 “I have to ask,” Jordan said, grinning at the camera, “Judy, earlier tonight you mentioned going solo. Are we witnessing the birth of a new indie queen? And Antonia, how does it feel to lose your brightest star?” The theater went silent. Everyone loves a public execution. I smiled graciously from the front row. “I support her completely. Judy has been with us for a long time, and we’ve had a wonderful run. If she feels it’s time to fly solo, Apex will facilitate a smooth exit. We’re all friends here. It’s a small town.” Judy’s expression darkened. She hadn’t expected me to announce the “divorce” so publicly and so casually. It made her look like she was being fired rather than quitting. “That’s right,” Judy forced a smile. “My contract is up, and I’m launching my own production banner. I hope everyone here will support my new journey.” “And will there be future collaborations between you two?” Jordan pressed. I felt a cold laugh bubbling in my chest. Collaborations? She wanted to leave the house but keep the credit card? “Antonia’s agency controls half the prestige scripts in the city,” Jordan continued, “I’m sure Judy will still be looking to you for those A-list projects.” I leaned into the microphone near my seat. “We’ll see where the road leads. Judy is a… professional. If the right project comes along, we’re always open to talent.” Judy’s eyes were a storm of complex emotions. “Of course. I’m looking forward to working on more original scripts,” she added, a subtle dig at the franchise work I’d steered her toward. I caught Jordan Kent’s eye—the host. He looked away quickly. That one look told me everything. He was in on it. He’d probably been promised a role in whatever “indie” project she thought she was starting. The awards moved to the main event. Jordan announced that for the first time, the Best Actor and Actress winners would be decided by a live weighted vote, including the front-row board members. Judy’s poise slipped. She looked at me, panic flaring in her eyes. I gave her a reassuring, maternal smile. She relaxed slightly and checked her phone. A second later, my phone buzzed. Judy: Antonia, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you first. I just had to do this for myself. About the contract… we can talk. Me: I understand. Good luck tonight. I hope all your dreams come true. She was obsessed with this trophy. She thought that because she was “my girl,” I would pull the final strings to ensure her “Triple Crown” legacy. In the wings, I could see her personal assistant already typing out victory tweets. The buzz was deafening. Her fan clubs were losing their minds online. But her rivals weren’t staying quiet. “Is she serious? The show isn’t even over and she’s celebrating? Talk about bad luck,” one rival fan base posted. “Judy Bell is acting like she bought the vote. It’s a public/board split tonight. She’s too cocky.” The tension in the room was thick. The big screen showed the live tally. It was neck-and-neck between Judy and Sofia Rossi. The clock ticked down to the final second. They were tied. “And now,” Jordan Kent announced, his voice booming, “the tie-breaking votes from our four industry titans in the front row!” The first three votes came in: one for Sofia, two abstentions. Every camera in the building pivoted to me. Judy stood on the edge of the stage, her hair perfectly tousled, a look of hungry anticipation on her face. I took the mic, my voice steady and resonant. “My vote goes to… Sofia Rossi.” On the giant screen, Judy’s smile didn’t just fade—it curdled. The camera stayed on her for a brutal five seconds as the realization hit her like a physical blow. She was frozen, a statue of pure, unadulterated shock.

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The shadows were lengthening across my desk when the phone rang. The name flashing on the screen made my stomach drop into a cold, hard knot. It was my husband, Brady. His voice was a jagged mess of sobs and static. He told me he’d hit someone with the car. He was hysterical, babbling, begging me to take the blame—to tell the police I was the one behind the wheel. “Don’t move. I’m coming,” I whispered. I grabbed my bag and bolted, the confused shouts of my coworkers fading behind me as I hit the elevator. “Elva, have you lost your mind? You’re looking at prison time!” Mrs. Gable, the senior accountant from the next cubicle, caught up to me in the lobby. Her grip was so tight her nails bit into my skin. I gently pried her fingers away, a strange, hollow smile on my face as I checked my phone. “He’s my husband. If I don’t help him, who will?” Outside the police tape, the world was a blur of flashing blues and reds. My parents were there, looking smaller and more fragile than I remembered. My father’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice cracking as he reached for me. “My girl, my foolish girl, go home! Let me tell them it was me. I’ll go to jail for him!” I squeezed their hands and stepped past them. I heard my mother gasp, felt her collapse onto the pavement as the sirens wailed into the twilight, but I didn’t turn back. I couldn’t. When the cold steel of the handcuffs snapped around my wrists, I looked up. Brady was standing by a patrol car in the distance. He wasn’t alone. Lydia, the “childhood friend” he’d always called his little sister, was tucked into his side, her hand resting on his arm. A few months later, the judge’s voice echoed through the courtroom: twenty years. As the bailiff led me toward the holding cell, the happy couple finally approached the railing. “Elva, sign this.” Lydia slid a manila folder toward me. Her manicured red nail traced the line for Divorce Decree: Total Forfeiture of Assets. “A convicted felon doesn’t deserve to be Brady’s wife.” Our daughter, Daisy, hid behind Brady’s legs. She peeked out, her face twisted with a practiced sort of disgust. “Mommy is a bad person. I don’t want a mommy like her.” I looked at my reflection in the plexiglass—gaunt, pale, unrecognizable—and I started to laugh. It was a dry, jagged sound. With my cuffed hands, I scrawled my name on the bottom line. Later, a guard told me that when my parents walked out of that courthouse, their hair had turned white. … When I first arrived at the scene of the accident, the air smelled like burnt rubber and copper. I’d shoved a trembling, incoherent Brady out of the driver’s seat and climbed in myself. I called 911, and the police arrived minutes later. The perimeter was secured with yellow tape. An ambulance screamed to a halt. The victim, a delivery driver, lay in a pool of dark red on the asphalt. He was unconscious, his body broken in ways that made my chest ache. They rushed him to the ER, but the silence he left behind was deafening. Under the hot lights of the interrogation room, I took every hit. My father had slapped me ten times in the hallway of the precinct, his face a mask of fury and grief. My mother had suffered a minor heart attack right there on the linoleum floor. The police moved me to holding. I was questioned for four hours straight. My attorney, Zavier, arrived in the middle of the night with three of my coworkers. They were ready to testify that I was at the office when the crash happened. I looked them in the eye and shut them down. “Is there footage?” I asked. There wasn’t. The security system had “glitched.” Zavier turned purple with rage, pacing the room and calling me a delusional martyr, a woman who had traded her brain for a wedding ring. The next morning, the news broke: the driver had died. A few hours later, I was led to the visitation room. My parents looked like they had aged a decade in a single night. When they heard I’d confessed to vehicular manslaughter—a sentence that could carry twenty years—my father pointed a shaking finger at me. “I didn’t raise a daughter with no backbone! Do you have any idea what twenty years means? Your life is over, Elva! Finished!” I sat there, silent. My mother’s hands trembled as she reached through the gap in the partition to straighten my collar. “Elva, honey, we know it wasn’t you. Just tell the truth. Zavier can fix this.” I shook my head. “Mom, it was me.” My father let out a long, ragged sigh. “You’ve given that man everything. You work ten-hour days, you run the house, you handle Daisy’s schooling, while he sits on the couch playing video games. He doesn’t even respect us. He berates you for taking us shopping! You’ve loved him until you disappeared. But this? You can’t take the fall for this.” “He’s right,” my mother whispered. “There’s no one else here, baby. If he’s threatening you, if there’s a reason… tell us.” Looking at their white hair and sunken eyes, my heart felt like it was being squeezed by pliers. But I hardened myself. I gave them a few empty platitudes and changed the subject. “Mom, the fifty thousand dollars I asked you to withdraw—did you give it to the victim’s wife?” The man Brady killed was a gig worker. He had nothing. Just a wife and a young son in a cramped apartment. “I did,” Mom said, wiping her eyes. “I gave it to her personally, just like you asked.” Before she could say more, the door swung open. Brady walked in, Lydia trailing behind him like a shadow. Behind them was Zavier, looking exhausted. “What are you doing here?” my father spat, stepping toward Brady. Brady flinched, taking a half-step back. “Dad, stop! Not here,” I called out. Seeing my father restrained, Lydia smirked. “I just wanted to check on Elva. I had to thank her for taking such good care of Brady. I mean, taking the rap for a fatal accident? That’s some ‘wife of the year’ energy right there.” Brady offered a weak, greasy smile. He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Elva, thank you. I won’t forget this. I promise.” A cold sneer rippled through my soul, but I kept my face soft, adoring. “Of course, honey. You’re my husband. I’d do anything for you.” My father looked like he wanted to vomit. “This isn’t love, Elva! It’s a lobotomy!” He pointed at Brady and Lydia’s hands, which were inches apart. “Look at him! He’s already moved on!” “Dad,” I said calmly, “they grew up together. They’re close. I trust Brady. He’d never do anything to hurt our marriage. Right, Brady?” Brady’s expression flickered—guilt, maybe, or just surprise—before he nodded quickly. “Exactly. Elva gets me. Lydia and I are… we’re just family.” Lydia didn’t pull her hand away. My mother couldn’t take it anymore. “Even if she’s naive enough to believe you, have you no shame? You’re a married man. Act like it.” Brady finally stepped away from Lydia, but the smirk stayed in his eyes. He looked at my mother. “Hey, she’s the one who insisted on doing this. I tried to stop her, really, but she’s just so crazy about me.” Then his face shifted, becoming sharp and suspicious. “Wait. Mom, you aren’t wearing a wire, are you? Because that won’t hold up in court.” I laughed softly. “Relax, Brady. I’m going to prison. We aren’t recording you.” He visibly exhaled. My mother saw my eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, standing by the door. “Daisy, come here, sweetie. Come to Grandma. Don’t stay near that man.” Daisy looked at me, her small face twisted with a chilling amount of contempt. “No. I’m not going over there. She’s a murderer. And you’re a murderer’s mother. You’re not my grandma anymore.” My mother clutched her chest. Dad quickly fumbled for her nitro pills, glaring at the little girl. “We spoiled you, Daisy. Your mother worked herself to the bone for you! How can you be so heartless?” Daisy literally spat on the floor. “I don’t want ‘murderer’ relatives. Gross.” She had always been our “little sunshine” at home. My parents had doted on her. Seeing the mask fall off felt like watching a horror movie. That’s when Lydia tossed a document onto the table. “Elva, if you really love him, sign this. It’s a clean break. You’re going away for a long time. What are Brady and Daisy supposed to do? If you’re going to take responsibility, go all the way. Leave the house and the savings to the people who actually have a future.” There it was. The real reason for the visit. My father exploded. “Brady! I thought you came here to support her, but you’re just here for the vultures’ share!” Brady flushed, but he stood his ground. “Dad, Lydia’s right. Elva’s going to be behind bars. Why should the money sit in a frozen account? Do you want Daisy to starve?” Daisy screamed at me, “You’re a bad person! You killed someone! You don’t deserve to be my mom. If you don’t sign it, you’re just hurting Daddy!” My mother was sobbing now. “Daisy, your mother didn’t kill anyone! She’s doing this for your father!” “If she didn’t do it, why did she say she did?” Daisy shouted. “She’s a killer! That delivery guy had a son. He’s nine! Poor kid!” Then she grabbed Lydia’s hand, her face lighting up with a terrifying brilliance. “Lydia is going to be my new mommy anyway!” Lydia scooped her up, looking triumphant. “That’s right, sweetie. You can just call me Mom from now on.” “Mommy!” Daisy cooed. “Sign it,” Brady said, looking back at me. “I’ll come visit you. I promise. Just make sure the girl is taken care of.” I knew he’d never step foot in a prison visitor’s room. But I picked up the pen anyway. With my hands still heavy in chains, I signed away my life, my home, and every cent I owned. My father wept openly. “Why, Elva? There are good men in this world. Why give everything to a monster?” I looked at him with a gaze that was far too peaceful for the circumstances. “Dad, you don’t understand. This is what devotion looks like.” Beside me, Zavier the lawyer couldn’t help himself. “Mrs. Quinn, with all due respect, even a person signing a death warrant would have asked for better terms than this.” A small crowd of people had gathered by the open door of the room—officers, other visitors, rubberneckers. They started laughing. “She’s a special kind of stupid,” one woman whispered loudly. “Getting cleaned out by a guy who brought his mistress to the precinct.” “It’s pathetic,” another added. “He’s clearly going to take the house and move the other woman in by dinner time. Does she have a brain deficiency?” “Maybe he has dirt on her?” someone wondered. My parents looked up, hoping for a lifeline, but Zavier shook his head. “As far as I know, Elva has a clean record and a history of charitable donations. There is no dirt. She’s just… giving it away.” The room went quiet for a beat. “Is she broke? Maybe she’s hiding debt?” “On the contrary,” Zavier sighed. “She’s debt-free. She just signed over a five-hundred-thousand-dollar home and half a million in personal savings.” The laughter returned, harsher this time. “What a joke. She’s a disgrace to women everywhere.” Brady and Lydia exchanged a look of pure greed. They were satisfied. A moment later, the guards came to transport me. As I was led away, I heard Daisy clapping her small hands. “Yay! The killer is going to jail!” I was processed into the county correctional facility. As the heavy door of the cell groaned shut, I looked at the three grey walls and the tiny, barred slit of a window. I took a deep breath. For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe. Nobody knew the truth. I wasn’t a martyr, and I certainly wasn’t “wife of the year.” I didn’t like prison. But I had a very, very good reason for being here. The next day. My mother came to visit. “Elva… Brady moved her into the house yesterday. And that BMW 5-series we bought you for your anniversary? Lydia’s been driving it all over town, showing off.”

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Here we are again. Tim is asking for a divorce. The excuse this time? His newest little pet is throwing a tantrum for a ring and a title. She’s young, he tells me, his tone practically bleeding with faux sympathy. Too fragile to be kept in the shadows. He strokes my arm, soothing me with promises that as soon as he gets bored of her, we’ll remarry. I just need to be a good girl and sign the papers. He says it with the casual ease of a man asking me to pick up dry cleaning, completely untroubled, as if dismantling our marriage is just a minor administrative hiccup. I put on my best performance, my voice trembling just the right amount as I ask if he truly means it this time. He barely glances at me. “I never lie, Cora.” He follows it up with a smug, self-assured smirk, reminding me that no one else has ever lasted more than six months by his side. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I carefully scan the divorce settlement, letting my eyes drop to the very bottom of the page, tracing the delightfully long string of zeros next to my name. The heavy, suffocating knot in my chest finally unravels. This is the one-hundredth time my husband has asked me for a divorce. For the previous ninety-nine times, he put on grand, theatrical shows to appease whatever little sugar baby he was keeping in a gilded cage. And every single time the ink dried on the final decree, the alimony hit my offshore accounts with the precision of a Swiss watch. What Tim doesn’t know is that my greatest, most paralyzing fear is that one day, he might stop being so impulsive. 1 Tim stepped out of the en-suite, aggressively towel-drying his damp hair. “Cora, don’t forget. We need to file the papers with the city clerk tomorrow morning.” I stood by the doorframe, the freshly signed separation agreement clutched to my chest. He opened his mouth to add something, but his phone buzzed. “…Relax, babe. I won’t even touch her. You know you’re the only one I want…” His voice dropped an octave, dripping with a sickening kind of intimacy. “Little brat. I’ll deal with you later…” I thoughtfully pulled the bathroom door shut to give him privacy and wandered out onto the balcony of the Hamptons estate. The night was thick and dark. Out here, the silence of the sprawling, isolated grounds felt almost melancholic. A few minutes later, Tim emerged, car keys jingling in his hand. He caught sight of my desolate silhouette against the moonlight, and his footsteps faltered. For a second, I thought he might actually possess the patience to comfort me. “Can’t bear to let me go?” he murmured, coming up behind me. “I know, I know. But this one… she’s a headache. Be good for me, Cora. This is the last time. I swear it. The absolute last time.” My eyes went wide in the dark. A cold sweat broke out along my spine. The last time? What does he mean, the last time? No, no, no. Please, keep your terrible habits. I quickly molded my face into an expression of pathetic dependency, turning to look up at him. “You’re so good to me, Tim.” My voice broke perfectly. “I never want you to be unhappy. I’d do anything for you.” He leaned down, his eyes searching mine. “I love you, Cora. We promised each other forever. These girls? They’re just playtime. You are the real Mrs. Vanderbilt. You always will be.” He straightened up, his gaze sweeping over the oceanfront property. “Standard protocol. This house is yours now.” My hands began to tremble. Truly tremble. He paused midway through buttoning his tailored coat, reaching out to pat my cheek. “Do whatever you want with it. Just don’t be sad.” His thumb brushed my cheekbone. “Be at City Hall on time tomorrow.” The front door clicked shut. He was gone. I collapsed onto the plush velvet sofa, all the feigned weakness draining from my bones as I looked around the magnificent estate with deep, unadulterated satisfaction. During our previous ninety-nine divorces, I had liquidated every single property he had ever signed over to me. The first time he found out I had sold our actual marital home, he was furious. He demanded to know why. I remember looking at him with trembling lips and eyes swimming in fabricated agony. “Tim, you don’t understand. Every time I looked at those walls, I just saw the moment you told me you were leaving me. I… I couldn’t breathe in there…” I had let the sentence hang, choking on an imaginary sob. He had pulled me into his arms, the guilt in his eyes entirely genuine. “I get it. Shh, don’t say another word, Cora. It was too painful.” From that day on, every time we inevitably reconciled and moved into a new place, he made sure the deed was solely in my name. When the divorce cycle repeated, the house was mine to do with as I pleased. For the first ninety-eight times, I played it safe. I never chose properties that were too obscenely expensive, terrified he might see through my facade and decide not to remarry me. But this Hamptons estate? He picked this one himself. It was easily worth nine figures. I didn’t even wait for the sun to rise. I called my luxury real estate brokers immediately. When they arrived, they took one look at me and smiled. We were old friends by now. Regulars. They weren’t just familiar with me; they knew Tim’s habits inside out. After all, I used them to sell the properties, and whenever Tim wanted to buy a new one to woo me back, he used them too, purely for convenience. They moved through the house with practiced efficiency, snapping photos, recording video walkthroughs, and taking inventory of the designer furniture. I sat curled up on the sofa, clutching my phone to my chest, my eyes rubbed raw and red. Tim called one of the brokers. “How is she? Is she crying?” He did this every time. Whenever he initiated a divorce, he obsessively checked in with the people around me, needing to know if I was falling apart. As if it proved the depth of his love. “Mrs. Vanderbilt is…” The broker caught herself, likely responding to whatever correction he barked on the other end. “Yes, Mr. Vanderbilt. Miss Su looks entirely devastated. Her eyes are so red.” I had been reading a particularly tragic romance novel on my phone for the last hour. The female lead’s misery was practically infectious. The broker hung up and looked at me with genuine pity. “He is such a toxic bastard.” I gave a pathetic little sniffle. “No, you don’t understand him. Deep down, he has a good heart.” The team of women looked at me like I was a hopeless, brainwashed relic. But business was business. As they packed up their lighting equipment, the lead broker winked. “Next time you need to buy, you know who to call. Loyalty discount. Twenty percent off the commission.” I didn’t say a word. They didn’t know. There wasn’t going to be a next time. 2 Tim and I had barely stepped out of the courthouse in downtown Manhattan when my phone began to ring. It was Margot, his adopted sister. She had harbored a borderline obsessive crush on him since childhood. The moment I answered, her voice was a sharp, interrogating whip. “Cora. Did you actually sign the papers? Tell me it’s real this time.” Margot had been waiting like a vulture in the wings for ninety-nine divorces, desperate to claim him. But Tim was the kind of man who would flirt with a passing shadow, yet he flat-out refused to look at his adopted sister that way. It drove her absolutely insane. I held the phone a few inches from my ear to save my eardrums. “We just filed the petition. The cooling-off period is a month. We get the final decree after that. Margot, have I ever lied to you?” If we were being entirely honest, Margot was essentially my third-biggest financial backer. Every time Tim and I reconciled, she would track me down, slam a terrifyingly large check on the table, and demand I leave him. And every time, I nodded, took the money, and agreed. “Who is that?” Tim demanded, his eyes narrowing. Usually, the second the paperwork was filed, Tim was already in his sports car, peeling away to his newest conquest. But today, he seemed oddly reluctant. We were supposed to file yesterday, but he dragged his feet for three days until I finally had to gently nag him into coming. “It’s Margot.” His face instantly relaxed. “She’s just a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum. Don’t let her get to you, babe.” Whenever Margot crossed a line, Tim always expected me to be the bigger person. I nodded, offering him a frail, tragic smile. “I know, Tim. I know she’s just acting out.” My compliance instantly irritated him. “You do know she’s in love with me, right? Does that seriously not make you jealous?” I let the tears well up in my eyes, letting them hover right on the brim without falling. My chin quivered. “How can you say that to me? It’s not that I’m not jealous. It’s that… I have no choice.” I looked utterly, profoundly broken. A flash of genuine pain crossed Tim’s features. He reached out, his thumb brushing my jaw. “Shh, babe, I’m sorry. I know. It’s the last time. Once I get this out of my system, I’m coming right back to you. No more drama, okay?” I nodded helplessly. What else could I do? He opened his mouth to say something more, but his phone rang. He answered it, his expression hardening into annoyance, before walking back over to me. “The little birds are getting restless. I’ve got to go. Call an Uber, alright?” That’s right. This time, he didn’t just have one sugar baby. He had a pair. Sisters. He didn’t even wait for my response before turning on his heel and striding toward his waiting driver. I let out a long, shuddering breath. Thank god. 3 The truth is, the very first time I found out Tim was cheating on me—the first time he demanded a divorce so he could marry his mistress—I fought it. I fought hard. Tim was the one who chased me. He didn’t care that I was an orphan with nothing to my name. He didn’t care that I didn’t come from a legacy family. He spent four years of college pursuing me relentlessly. After graduation, to prove he wanted to marry me, he knelt outside his mother’s study in their Upper East Side townhouse for three entire days. Eventually, his mother called me in for a meeting. She didn’t mince words. “The Vanderbilt men,” she said, her voice like chilled glass, “are incapable of fidelity. It is a genetic rot. He has his father’s exact temperament. I am not refusing this marriage to protect him. I am doing it to protect you.” Her gaze drifted to the antique, centuries-old molding of the study. Her tone grew heavy with the ghosts of the women who came before us. “Girl… I do not want to watch another flower wither away inside the walls of this house.” She was sincere. But I was young, and I was so incredibly stupid. I thought my love was the exception. How could Tim be like them? This was the boy who would wake up at dawn just to bring me hot coffee in bed. The man who abandoned multi-million-dollar board meetings just to sit with me because I had a mild fever. Young girls are so easily snared by those fleeting moments of intense, cinematic devotion. We mistake grand gestures for a safe harbor, and by the time we realize we’re drowning, we’re too far from the shore. I wasn’t lying to the realtors earlier. That first divorce destroyed me. Standing in the middle of the penthouse we had decorated together, my heart felt like it was being ripped through my ribcage. I knew, even then, that even if it was just a phase, even if we eventually found our way back to each other, the betrayal had carved a canyon in my chest. It was a wound that would never fully close. One touch, and I would bleed out all over again. You can’t just tie a severed string back together and pretend the knot isn’t there. But knowing the truth doesn’t make leaving any easier. I couldn’t let go. On the night he proposed to his first mistress, I snapped. I took a blade to my wrists in our marble bathroom. Watching the crimson pool on the pristine white tiles, a sudden, pathetic wave of desperation hit me. I just wanted a crumb of affection from the man who had discarded me. I reached for my phone with bloody fingers and dialed his number. It rang and rang and rang before he finally picked up. “Cora. Didn’t I tell you not to contact me until the papers are finalized?” His voice was thick with annoyance. “Stop causing scenes. Just be a good girl. I’ll come find you when the novelty wears off.” “Don’t make me angry, Cora, or I really will leave you for good.” “Tim… I…” My voice was a ragged, wet whisper. I wanted to beg him not to leave me behind. I wanted him to come home. He caught the terrifying weakness in my breath. He paused. Then, his voice dropped to a glacial sneer. “What now? Faking an illness to guilt-trip me? Stop being so damn pathetic, Cora.” The line went dead. I lay there, the cold seeping into my bones, and in that agonizing silence, something inside me crystallized. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t the one who broke our vows. I wasn’t the one who threw away our life. Why the hell should I be the one bleeding out on a bathroom floor? I managed to dial 911. When I woke up in the stark, sterile hospital room, the space beside my bed was empty and cold. That was the moment my love for Tim Vanderbilt finally died. I decided, right then and there, that I would leave him and never, ever look back. But that was also the moment it happened. As I hovered in that liminal space between life and death, a voice—cold, mechanical, and entirely divorced from reality—echoed in my skull. It called itself the 100-Divorce Protocol. It laid out a cosmic, inescapable bargain: Survive, but only if I completed one hundred divorces from Tim. If I failed, if I walked away before the quota was met, the death I had just escaped would reclaim me. I tried to refuse. I had just accepted death, hadn’t I? Why should I be afraid? “Because the death I give you will not be a quiet fading,” the voice had whispered in my mind. “It will be violent. It will be agonizing. And there will be nothing left of your beauty.” It knew my vanity. I could accept dying. I couldn’t accept being butchered. So, I made the deal. 4 I stood on the steps of the courthouse, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the glaring afternoon sun. “Get in.” Margot’s perfectly contoured face appeared from the rolled-down window of a sleek black Maybach. She never trusted me. Every time I came to file the papers, she had to see it with her own eyes. I didn’t argue. I slid into the rich leather interior. “Where am I staying this time?” She rolled her eyes, her lips pressing into a thin line of disgust. She didn’t even want to waste her breath on me. I understood. The pure, unadulterated arrogance of a legacy heiress. This was the ninety-ninth time. Margot was always paranoid that I would refuse to leave the marital home, so the moment I stepped out of City Hall with her brother, she would have a team of movers pack up my life and dump it into whatever condo she had purchased for me as a parting gift. “If you really have nowhere to go, I guess you’d just keep clinging to my brother,” she scoffed. “Giving you a condo is just charity.” “Drop the starving-artist act. I know exactly what kind of parasite you are,” she sneered, looking out the window. “All that ‘I don’t care about the money’ nonsense. You’re just playing the long game. Reeling him in for the big payout. Too bad my idiot brother is entirely blind to it.” Honestly? Margot was incredibly perceptive. I wasn’t playing the starving artist. Every time Tim and I got back together, I quietly listed the condo she had “gifted” me, sold it to the highest bidder, and wired the cash straight to my offshore accounts. But today, Margot didn’t take me straight to the new apartment. She directed her driver to Fifth Avenue. “This one. That one. And this entire rack. Wrap it all up.” She stood half a head taller than me, her eyes raking over my outfit with unfiltered disdain. To play the perfect, devoted “trad-wife,” my wardrobe consisted entirely of soft pastels, modest hemlines, and sensible flats. Low-profile. Submissive. Economical. Under the envious, wide-eyed stares of the luxury boutique staff, I watched a mountain of garment bags pile up. Next, she dragged me to an ultra-exclusive med-spa and salon, ordering a top-to-bottom overhaul. When it was over, I found myself staring at a stranger in the full-length mirror. I was entirely captivated by my own reflection. A champagne silk slip dress draped perfectly over my curves, the asymmetrical neckline highlighting my collarbones. A heavy collar of pink and blue sapphires rested against my skin, paired with a matching, brilliantly cut sapphire bracelet on my wrist. I looked lethal. Radiant and breathtakingly expensive. I swallowed hard, pushing down the intoxicating surge of vanity, and gently touched the cold stones. I looked at Margot nervously. “You aren’t going to make me give these back after I wear them, are you?” Margot inhaled deeply, looking at me like I was a peasant who had just crawled out of a sewer. “Who the hell would want to wear jewelry you’ve sweated on? If I put it on you, it’s yours. Shut up and stop being so embarrassing.” …Her temper really was atrocious. But god, I loved her. 5 Margot dragged me to an invite-only jewelry auction. I quickly pieced together the situation: This was the premier social event of the season. Tim had originally promised to be Margot’s escort, but those two little birds of his had kept him tied up in bed, forcing him to cancel on his sister. Margot was furious. She wanted blood. She wanted to force his new toys into a room with his “devastated” ex-wife and watch the fireworks. We arrived fashionably late. The moment we stepped into the gilded ballroom, the air shifted. A hundred pairs of eyes locked onto me. Shock. Pity. Predatory intrigue. In the past, whenever news leaked that Tim had initiated a divorce, I vanished. I became a ghost, refusing to be seen in the same zip code as him. The socialites in the room couldn’t hide their ravenous excitement. The quiet, long-suffering Mrs. Vanderbilt is finally going to bare her teeth. Tim heard the murmurs. He was seated in the VIP front row. He turned his head, and his eyes landed on me. His broad shoulders went rigid. A dark, stormy shadow crossed his face, his brows knitting together in a heavy scowl. The sheer weight of his stare was suffocating. I played my part perfectly. I shrank under his gaze, lowering my eyes, looking utterly miserable and out of place as I meekly followed Margot to our seats. “Um, Margot… I don’t have the kind of money for—” She didn’t even look at me. Her eyes were laser-focused on Tim, who was currently whispering sweet nothings to his two little accessories in the front row. “Shut up.” I clamped my mouth shut. Hey, don’t blame me when the bill comes due. I knew exactly what I was doing. She was using me as a human shield to humiliate the new girls. Right on cue, the older of the two sisters gasped at a pair of flawless emerald drop earrings displayed on the stage. Tim raised his paddle. Margot glanced sideways at me. “You want them?” Before I could even open my mouth, she nodded to herself. “You want them.” She raised her paddle. The room erupted into hushed, electrified whispers. “Oh, this is going to be good.” “Tim has been so brazen lately. Didn’t they say his wife was a doormat who never fought back?” “What is going on? And why did he bring Margot?” “You idiot, Margot brought her to use her as a weapon against the mistresses.” “I mean, Tim really crossed the line this time. Buying them penthouses is one thing, but didn’t he basically propose in public? That’s a slap in the face to his actual wife.” “No woman could tolerate that.” “Please. What can she do? She’ll throw a little fit, and then she’ll go right back to wagging her tail for him. She’s pathetic.” “Quiet, the bidding is starting.”

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